Rain, rain, come again

Photo / Richard Robinson

I gotta say - I really miss the rain. Based in Auckland I haven't seen much of the wet stuff so far this year and to be honest, I really do miss it. Not that I'm not enjoying the extended summer... I love that too. I don't know, there's something relaxing about the rain. For a starter if it's raining I don't feel guilty parking my butt on the couch for the day watching TV. When it's sunny I feel as if I should be fixing up the house or mowing the lawns.

On Sunday morning we had a few showers...it was nice for those short 20 minutes just lying in bed with the window open listening to it falling. The darkened skies made the bedroom all that more cosy and the dog agreed. Harry laid curled up in a ball for longer than usual not really wanting to venture out. Even when he did trot out for his morning pee the wet grass didn't seem to impress him much and in true Golden Retriever nature he ponced back inside very quickly, head held high and tail boofy.

I've often dreamt about moving to another part of New Zealand. I find Auckland's weather can be a little repetitive... we tend to only get a handful of stormy days a year, the rest are "sunny and cloudy periods, sou'west breezes".

The problem with me is that I'm incredibly fussy. So while I love the stormy weather Wellington is famous for, I end up missing the extra warmth that Auckland provides.

Then, to completely contradict myself, I end up wishing Auckland had colder winters where the temperature barely reached double digits and frosts lasted all day. It's the cold winters of Christchurch that appeal to me, I love the idea of a roaring fire all day. But, I'd miss the rain too much and Canterbury is a fairly dry region.

Invercargill - a city I must confess to have never visited - is a place I'd love to live for a winter. For some strange reason the thought of howling gales (which they have had plenty of over this weekend and the past 6 months) and bitterly cold weather appeals to me.

There was a time when I wanted to live on Macquarie Island (halfway to Antarctica)... quite possibly the catalyst for my marriage ending?! The barren nature of this island that sometimes sees icebergs floating by and days of gales and pounding rain or hail seemed cosy in my mind...being in some little hut with a heater going and all I did all day was read books and maybe write books as rain dripped down the glass windows and the sub-zero wind howled outside around me.

Isolated, wintry, places have always appealed to me in fantasy land. In reality I don't like them. But in my mind places like the Aleutian Islands off Alaska, the one or two random islands around Antarctica, the many fiords and islands of Canada's arctic circle - they all appeal to me. I love the idea of being there, isolated from the "busy" world and seeing a more brutal side of mother nature.

However my trip to America last year proved that actually, at heart, I enjoy being in or near a big city and I love relatively hot, humid, weather. While staying in Nebraska - the furthest point from the sea in the US and the only state I know of that during football season has a grandstand that, during a final game, literally becomes the state's 3rd biggest populated place - anyway while being there, in the middle of nothing, it only took 48 hours before I had absorbed about as much isolation as I could take.

In New Zealand one of the most isolated places I've visited is the tip of East Cape. There was a howling southerly the two times I've been there and white caps out at sea...the middle of winter and not a soul around me. Smoke billowed from a nearby farm house and I thought what a wonderful place it looked in the setting sun.

I don't know yet if Tropical Cyclone Ului will visit New Zealand but there is a slightly increased risk from the coming weekend onwards. While I know storms of this nature can be deadly, even when they've lost some steam this far south, I still secretly hope that it comes here. Not only bringing much needed rain to Northland and Auckland...but so that I can sit inside, not feel guilty for blobbing indoors, and fall asleep to the sound of rain once again.