Strawberry Rain

Lying stretched out on the patio focussing on this wild strawberry I was transported back to my childhood. A crop of wild strawberries growing from the red sandstone railway bridge near Chapelcross, I was about eight and the spot seemed so far from my house, did my parents know? Better they didn't or that we followed the disused line down to the Solway, more for the quicksands than the nuclear waste pipeline that ran from the power station to the sea!
More strawberry triggered memories too. A poem written on a summer day when the heavy fruit scented day finally succumbed to thunderous rain. I can only remember its title "Strawberry Rain", it was full of teenage angst and published in the Spier's School magazine, what I can remember is my clumsy evocation of the sounds and scents of sudden heavy rain after days of hot sunshine; the dry paint smell as water hit blistered glosspaint on railings and window frames; the collective sigh of parched lawns as the water bubbled on their cracked surfaces and the sudden frenzied taking in of deck chairs, sun loungers and whipping of laundry from washing lines. Indoors the air humid and hazy with smoke from overcooked shortcake to accompany the strawberries sweetened by weeks of sunshine, the family suddenly brought together by the deluge.

All this from a tiny 1 cm fruit from this.