Sarahribu

This is not one of those stories where the rain returns to a land long parched. We have always had rains here, they are known for their persistent and periodical nature. We are known to moan at lengths about them. Our crops have traditionally been modest but sufficient, our people not stricken with dehydration other than as a side effect of too much alcohol. We are a green and pleasant land, and it is if God himself gives us our moisture with his watering can, pleasant consistent drops that nurture us.

What is falling now is not rain. There are not words for what it is.

It started with ‘and in other news’ on the nightly broadcast. Record rains in Australia, a thick band of rain a mile deep appearing across the satellite pictures. The rain paid no heed to the traditions of weather patterns, the inexplicable gulf forces and trade winds, nor microclimates insidious or divine. The deserts were drenched, the reservoirs swollen far beyond breaking point. The story quickly moved within days to the main broadcast once a man died, gaiety removed from the reporters’ tone as if it had never been there.

There were initial hopes that this was just a hurricane that had been missed. Perhaps some other known natural disaster, a tsunami like in ‘04, but whilst we dithered making shiny graphics on the nightly news to explain the thing, The band moved onwards, gaining momentum over the endless seas and deepest oceans. By the time it reached the equator the band was ten miles longitudinal with delicate corniced ends curled in, vortex like, where it could be seen on the latitude. The first images arrived from boats over the South China Sea of it raining upwards where the edges were, as if an invisible sponge was being wrung in reverse. What fell as it reached China was confirmed what people suspected – saline, supersaturated and ineffably destroying.

The band was slowly edging upwards; leaving behind it ruined ecosystems and damage that could barely be described in monetary terms, as we so normally do describes tragedies in our modern culture. The reporting switched back to describing the loss in terms of life, of miles and kilometres, the language of war and other things easily quantified in huge numbers whilst maintaining some kind of rational meaning. By this point it had gained proper noun status, The Band being ominous and irreligious enough to stick, as if what we named it would make a difference.

I was watching television and the gentle comedy I was attempting to enjoy was interrupted to give the news that edges of The Band had joined up over Chile. The implication sat underneath the gravitas of the announcement. The hysteria rose like bile, and then there were scared masses panic buying, as if rice could save us by doing anything but swelling up and absorbing the water! I mocked the stockpiling masses when amongst my peers, but found myself crying in Tesco’s blessed aisles at 3AM, unable to sleep, attempting to work out which can of carrots would last me longer when the time came to suck them down.

A week later and our song had changed to Oh, Africa! We once sang for you and donated goods and cash to bring water where none fell. Oh, we said, how delicious our irony. Yes, there were tasteless jokes and political cartoons featuring Geldof for what they were worth, but the underlying current was ‘embrace black humour, because it is us next.’ We are now at stage [x] of the grieving process.

We held our breaths as it crossed the mythical line that separated Europe from the world. We knew little of what remained behind it, the band covered much of the world, but was it still just rain south of the equator, or were we in the throws of a biblical level flood? Last I checked boats were not returning to harbour, and my hands could barely build a barbeque, let alone an ark. How long would my modest house last? Sure, my windows are double-glazed and they keep out water in normal situations, but what of this? Could the man from Everest soothe my querying soul? I entertained the thought of calling the hotline for a minute, demanding an answer, before dismissing it as a stupid, overindulgent idea.

Three weeks after it all started with that little joke at the end of the nightly news, we British were told in the sombre tones of the Prime Minister and then the even sombre-er tones of the BBC that Paris was now beneath the band. Our old enemy was drowned. The rain would be here by lunchtime.

My friends and I had decided, during a ‘celebratory’ end of the world dinner the week before, that since my house was the only one with plastic windows we would take our refuge there. Grey faces arrived that evening, and we played music and did things fitting of a last night on Earth. We climbed onto the roof to watch the last sunrise. I would have liked to say it was amazing, breathtaking, moving or heartbreaking but with all the vapour in the air, the heavy cloud cover and all the smoke from fires and fireworks hanging choking thick, it was barely noticeable, a slow rise from the orange tinge of the city to that of the day. It was sad more than anything that our end was here and it was so unspectacular, so very British.

The sun was blotted out, finally, at 11:06 on an understandably humid morning. It had not been beaming down but it was still visible, the cherished golden orb. My last hysterical thought in daylight was that it was fitting that the sun would now never set on the British Empire. It’s strange what the brain throws up.

My face turned upwards, I felt the first drop and was surprised that it felt like normal rain.