As Safe As Houses...

I look out the front window now and then and am thankful I needn't go out as much, so I can be free of being soaked to the skin, or watching my umbrella crumple upwards against the coming force of the storm. I'm not facing snowflakes or hailstones, or walking and slipping on the frosted snow. As a child who walked to school, I sometimes walked the snow-capped streets and shivered as the warm air left my mouth to become the misty outpourings of my breath. Same again, when walking to work, yet knowing that after the cold weather twilight ordeal, I still had to do my day job or my shift and sometimes overtime, too. I'll never forget one night when walking home, through the 2 foot high snow that had settled and that stayed compressed upon the ground and every single step forward was laboured, like a forced up and down process to finally get home... Nor will I ever forget when working as a petrol attendant, forced out of the office shelter to the unprotected gas pump, standing there, getting drenched, filling up a car tank, while the rain smashed against me without mercy, nor the guys in the car, when they laughed at my predicament. But, of course, that was the job, fair weather or foul. Now that I am home most of the time, perhaps I can laugh at them outside, sometimes caught in the rain... But knowing how that felt, I pity them... Denis Martindale, February 2016.