There was a palpable sense of tension at the crossing. Canberra is a planned city, built American-style, around cars. Many roads, even within the city centre, have three or more lanes of traffic. Serial pedestrians like myself will spend significant time waiting for the green man to signal. Usually, it’s a pleasant symptom of a city where nobody ever seems to be in much of a rush and most people would laugh heartily at the idea of a 30-minute commute.
After more than five years in London, where everyone minces resentfully through the crush of the streets and seems moments from weeping or losing their reason, the slower pace and ability to stand or walk without being shoved is a distinct relief.
This place is still new enough to me that I enjoy a few minutes to stand still.
I left our apartment building on my usual silly walk to the local supermarket to marvel at most fresh food being both larger and noticeably cheaper than it was in London. Several months in, this too remains a novelty. A kilo of beef mince for less than €8. The biggest and best avocado you’ve ever eaten for 80 cents. Unusually, the sky over Canberra had a touch of my native Limerick about it as I ambled along the street. It was low to the ground and shifty looking, like a mottled grey watercolour.
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In Ireland, leaving the house without an umbrella – ever – is of course an act of spectacular hubris for which a person rightly deserves swift and excoriating punishment. The pagan gods of our forefathers lie in wait, opening the low-lying clouds to deposit several billion litres of fridge-cold water on to everyone in the country because one of us insisted they’d be grand without an umbrella. “It’s only 15 minutes’ walk. Sure Sandra has no socks on inside her shoes. It’s a dry day.”
It was this sort of thinking that lost us the six counties.
As usual, I stopped at the crossing while six lanes of traffic snarled past from all directions. A handful of people began to await the green man, as usual, on both sides. In the hot, heavy air, a gelatinous uneasiness lingered. People about me began looking to the sky, shifting from foot to foot and talking among themselves about the possibility of rain.
Fully indulging all the notions of emigrant impulses that simply wouldn’t ever be tolerated at home, I was wearing cream jeans
Now, in fairness to natives of Australia’s capital, rain here is not the poetic, misty smattering we commonly get at home. The kind that gives a reasonable amount of notice before building to something that Heathcliff might emerge smoulderingly from across a moor or Marty Morrissey might slightly less smoulderingly just get away with conducting an interview in while the spongy foam around the mic slowly swells from atmospheric moisture. Rain here is aggressive, sudden, and often unsettlingly warm. Getting caught in it feels a bit like taking a shower fully clothed in the street when your mother would only consent to putting the immersion on for half an hour “with the price of heat these days”.
As I stood at the crossing in Canberra, my phone reading 29 degrees and the rain beginning to spatter my scalp and shoes, I absorbed the panic of those around me.
None of us were prepared.
Nobody had an umbrella.
Fully indulging all the notions of emigrant impulses that simply wouldn’t ever be tolerated at home, I was wearing cream jeans. People were lifting handbags over their heads, hunching over as the drizzle gained momentum into a gentle rain. A man no longer content to await the green light ran out into the lanes of traffic like a farm dog craving order but lost in the city.
I found myself fretting. Mirroring this shared hysteria. “Oh no. It’s raining.”
Then I realised.
The following is more of a felt reality than an empirical statement about meteorology (so any resulting letters to the editor might be misguided) but anyone from the west of Ireland will understand what I mean. It rained every day in Limerick from the day I was born until my last trip home six months ago. It rained every day, and maybe all day. I haven’t got a single childhood memory set in dry weather. I was, to quote Tom Hardy’s Bane, “Born in the [rain]“. We all were. Most of my formative memories entail being cold, drenched or both, and that’s simply what it is to be Irish (and never be allowed to put the immersion on because heat is more conceptual than it is accessible).
While the Australians ran about (quite sensibly) trying to get indoors lest the downpour become an apocalyptic deluge, I straightened my back with national arrogance and continued my silly little walk
While warm rain is, I confess, new to me (it can confuse the body, making you wonder if you either need the bathroom or are actually going without your own consent) this was a moment when I realised that I’ve clearly assimilated more than previously realised. I’ve become unused to the rain, but I know the rain, and like every Irish person, I know how to stand out in it without being deterred from whatever is going on. A match. A walk. A fight with your spouse. A day’s work or school in wet clothes follows. The sensation of feet rubbing against the inside of sopping shoes for hours.
While the Australians ran about (quite sensibly) trying to get indoors lest the downpour become an apocalyptic deluge, I straightened my back with national arrogance and continued my silly little walk. “You’re not made of sugar,” I told myself as I felt the water trailing down the back of my neck and wondered again why the tepid rain was confusing my brain into thinking I needed to pee.
It was still bucketing on my walk back, the rain melting my paper grocery bag. The perfect avocado tumbled heavily into the road only to be instantly squashed by a passing car (proving its ideal ripeness – an Irish supermarket avocado would have remained fully intact or burst the tyre).
“It’s only a bit of rain,” I thought smugly, leaving the pulverised avocado for dead, each step squelching audibly on the rapidly flooding pavement.
