On downpours and a very liquid humble pie
el chaparrón: downpour, heavy shower
It was when I heard the ‘drip, drip, drip’ of rainwater splashing from the roof of one of our local beach bars onto the table in front of me, distracting me from my second breakfast that I thought ‘Enough is enough. I cave.’
Nothing and no one comes between me and my Nutella treat. Not even my pride.
Day 1: Córdoba
When I experienced my first proper Andalusian chaparrón, I almost performed a little dance. Having lived (and loved) the unpredictability of 4-seasons-in-a-day British weather over the past decade, waking up to the same turquoise sky every morning since we moved to Andalucía had started to feel a little groundhog day-ish. And I let everyone who would or wouldn’t hear of it know about my gripe with the Spanish sun. When the rain finally came, I could have hardly wished for a better place to get caught in a downpour than the cobbled streets of Córdoba’s old town. At a slight decline, the streets all point towards the centuries-old mosque and the heavy rain almost immediately formed streams, angrily leaping across the gleaming grey stones, filling every crevice. Córdoba might be a 2nd century BC cradle of civilisation, but the force of this water was even more ancient. Unforgiving.
Day 5: Laundry
After the initial drama came its inevitable sequitur. The mundane. Being spoiled with more than 300 days of sunshine per year, most people in Cádiz dry their clothes outside. So there was only one question that dominated small talk as I dashed to fruterías, bares y la pelu (the hairdressers) on day 5 of non-stop rain. How to dry your clothes. Or a common variation on the theme: how quickly you ran to bring clothes inside having been foolish enough to trust a break in the clouds.
Day 9: Cracks
Resolved to uphold the ur-German attitude – There is no such thing as bad weather, only wrong clothing – I headed off to Madrid for a week of holidaying. The rain travelled with me. Rictus-grinning my way through wet morning runs to explore the neighbourhood, I put on a brave face. But every soggy sock and jumper sticking to my back slowly started to cling to my resolve to not complain about the rain. Like soap water sticking to the paper label of a yoghurt pot as you rinse it, leaving nothing but brown mush.
Day 10: Destruction
As much as I tried keeping it together, the world around me wasn’t. The local press published ever more alarming headlines about new precipitation records. One beach bar terrace after another was carried into the sea. Lying awake at night, the beating of the rain against our windows mixed with the angry roar of the Atlantic Ocean. I was almost convinced I would wake up drenched. This is global weirding everybody. I was living through my personal climate apocalypse.
Day 15: Signs of madness
Stuck inside in a town that doesn’t offer much by way of entertainment if you discount the sea and the outdoors, I started to notice serious personality changes. Suffering from a fear of birds ever since a fateful mallard incident at the age of 3, I became fascinated with the comings and goings of a beige bird with concentric Zebra circles across its tail. Obsessive trilingual Google searches finally bore fruit: I was looking at a hoophoe.
I could feel my true identity dissolving. I needed to get outside.
Day 16: Me está cayendo una que no veas. / I’m getting soaked.
Determined to stick to the plan I made with a friend to catch-up on the phone while walking way back when the continuance of such bad rain seemed but a distant and absurd possibility, I discovered the challenges of walking with an umbrella while talking on the phone faced with horizontal rain and storm surges. There is such thing as bad weather!
Day 20: Pleading with the weather gods.
So that’s how I ended up at the dripping beach café, lifting my head to the skies and imploring whomever would listen: I take it all back – the complaints about the endless sunshine and the monotony of baby-blue skies, the hymns of praise to the London drizzle. Please. Give me back the Andalusian sunshine. ¡No hay quien aguante esto! Ni siquiera yo. / There is no one who can bear this. Not even I.