‘One of life’s best moments’: Fran Whiting on the event that always makes her smile

There’s truly nothing cosier or sweeter and it’s really one of life’s best moments you don’t have to pay for, writes Frances Whiting.

The other night, it rained. Really rained. Pounded down on my roof like a thousand hands were beating on it. Sent arcs of spray hurtling across the sky, turning windows into glass rivers and leaves into tiny, green hammocks filled with water.

I woke up to it, and stayed awake, listening to its thrumming score. Is there anything nicer than waking to rain? Cosier? Sweeter? Registering somewhere in your sleepiness that it is indeed a glorious, full-throated rainstorm you are hearing, then snuggling down beneath the blankets and letting it accompany you back to dreaming.

It’s got to be up there in the list of life’s best moments you don’t have to pay for, hasn’t it? But you can, of course, pay for rain.

Frances Whiting on why rain is one of her favourite things. Picture: Tara Croser.

I’ve got one of those apps on my phone that plays rain sounds – all sorts of rain actually. Rain on the roof, rain on a tent, city rain, rain in a forest, heavy rain, light rain – and I listen to it at night sometimes to see if it might lull me into sleep.

And sometimes, it does. But it occurred to me the other night when I woke to those great big, fat drops on the roof, and heard the fullness of it, the richness of it, that nothing – no matter how well recorded – beats it.

It’s like walking into a hotel lobby where a crackling fire is on a gigantic screen. Or tropical fish, endlessly swimming, in a loop. Or a snapshot of a forest, birdsong playing tinnily in its branches.

We are becoming – or at least I am – more and more accustomed to living life as a second-hand experience. A sort of facsimile of it. And so, the other night, when I lay listening to the rain – and my husband’s soft snores – I made a little pact with myself. That we would get separate beds. No. That the next time it rained, I was going to go full Drew Barrymore and twirl around in it.

Columnist Frances Whiting shares her love for rain.

That when I want to hear birdsong, I’ll take myself into a forest to listen. If I want to see fish, I’ll dive beneath the ocean with a mask and snorkel on. And something else, too. If I want to talk to a friend, I’m going to pick up the phone. To talk, not text.

Or meet them in person. To hug them, tell them how much I love their new haircut, breathe in their familiar scent, give their hands a squeeze.

Remember who they are and who I am around them. And if I have something difficult to say to someone close to me, I’m going to say it in person. Not in an email. And if someone has something difficult to say to me, I want to hear it. In their words. Face-to-face. Eye-to-eye. Human to human. Imperfect to imperfect. Damaged to damaged. Beloved to beloved.

Because the rain reminded me the other night of the value, the beauty and even – with a crack of a thunderclap so loud it made me jump in my bed – the terror of the real thing.

Originally published as ‘One of life’s best moments’: Fran Whiting on the event that always makes her smile