Beating down

The sound of Scottish rain beating down and battering against the window is comforting. Like a slap from your mother or a cup of tea with three spoons of sugar, like a Rich Tea biscuit smeared with Robertson's jam, tatties and butter and blankets that are warm but rough as sandpaper and cat's claws. Like a bird pecking through the silver lid of a Co-op milk bottle stranded on a mid morning doorstep, like the chipped paint on the door and skirting that the previous tenant created years ago. Like the rented timber coated TV with the burnt out tube and the rotary dial that toggles lazily between the two flickering channels. Like wallpaper that's marked and dirty and appears to have been designed by a madman, like coal and crumbled yesterday's ashes, like torn linoleum and wearing hand me down trousers from your bigger cousin, like having no holidays but not really noticing, like death creeping out from the hedges and doorways around you as another old neighbour succumbs; nobody talks or says a word. The sound of Scottish rain...comforting like the past.