Hail

So I’m driving across town around 4pm on Friday and my ancestors decide to violently approve of my new-second-hand car, the one that recently replaced the privately-redistributed older model. You know the thing, in Africa rain is your ancestors' blessing. (It must have been my grannies and them, because I doubt the afterlife provides cheap package tours from Europe.) This guy Anthony, the boyfriend of my expat friend’s expat friend, says that only expats think rain is a misery. True Africans love rain, he claims. And I think he’s right -my hair feels floaty and I get a little warm point in my brain when it rains. I associate rain entirely with romance and steamy nights and clean leaves. I have fond memories of pumping breathlessly across the patch of veldt near our house on my bicycle, my brother behind, trying to outrace the giant thunderheads which had lazily built themselves throughout the baking afternoon at the swimming pool until the inevitable, needlessly adrenalised race, always around 4pm.

None of that works quite like it used to though, thanks to GlobalWarming Inc. Now we’ve got long patches of grey drizzle, cold spells midsummer, you know the drill. So Friday, I’m driving along Empire road after a hot day looking at the purple grey clouds lowering over the sun and thinking, ah, just like the old days. Thought fondly of the bicycle. Then the hail started. Eish it’s loud. The car cowers under the sparse cover of battered trees. I’m wondering just how much force it takes to break a windscreen. And how so much ice stayed up in the air for any length of time at all. And thinking thanks gran, but I already knew the car was a good buy. At least I get a feeling not unlike the daily bicycle chase of my youth, slightly breathless and adrenalised despite the lack of very real danger. But perhaps I'm wrong about the danger. When if finally stops, the inch of ice on my bonnet takes 20 minutes slow driving to melt. So, no return to the old days, girls and boys. Either its climate change or our ancestors have become drunkards, alcoholic parents, catastrophic and unpredictable in their approval.