Me, I like rain on a grey afternoon
The quotation is from the titlepiece of Scottish songster/guitarist Kris Drever’s 2010 album Mark the Hard Earth.
2020’s first dose of wild, wintry weather in southwestern Australia brought Kris’s song to mind.
Kris was prompted to write it by an irritation that I share: at people – most especially, TV weather presenters – who further the patently stupid notion that “good” weather must, perforce, mean bright, sunny weather.
Kris would surely enjoy autumn and winter in the location depicted above – Molesworth Station, a “high country” farm on New Zealand’s South Island.
(photo, copyright Doug Spencer, taken at 6.10 pm on 13 March 2019 – a moment when we were dry, in almost-sunshine, whilst showers scudded across the valley’s western slopes)
Molesworth is, simultaneously, New Zealand’s largest farm and a Recreation Reserve.
It is a place of great natural beauty, serious conservation effort…and NZ’s largest cattle herd!
The road which runs through it is NZ’s highest “public” road.
(fun fact: whilst New Zealand has many much higher mountains than Australia’s, the top of Australia highest generally-accessible road – see #32 in this “a shining moment” series – is nearly 500 metres higher than the 1,347 metre Island Saddle on Molesworth Station Road. If you consider how very different are NZ’s and Australia’s topographic and climatic conditions, this “counter-intuitive” fact is not so surprising, after all)
Discover more about Molesworth Station here.
In May 2020, Kris Drever is, perforce, not performing in public places, but it so happens that he has just home-recorded a new performance of Mark the Hard Earth.
He posted it this very day:
If you are new to Kris Drever, you have many good things to discover, in his various capacities – solo artist, member of Lau, and collaborator with other singers and instrumentalists.
One of my favourite celebrations of grey days is the nicely-titled United States of Mind, from its author’s1973 album Pipedream.
Alan Hull (1945-1995) is best remembered as the primary songwriter and lead singer in the band Lindisfarne.
Totally agree about weather presenters and news readers who don’t seem to appreciate how important rain is to all of us, those in cities and the country.