SUMMER STORM

There was a summer storm today. It raged across the South of England and crept into our part of the world just after 4pm.

Dark skies. It always starts with dark skies - the still air that somehow manages to muster a breeze. A distant rumble, a dog, a car engine, the gentle flicker of something far off beyond the horizon.

Then the rain. Thick, white and heavy it fell, until I couldn't see the street. The window rattled. The air shook. The thunder growled.

It's formed by difference - an electrical difference between the earth and the sky, like two ends of a battery. Each lightning strike is nature's way of correcting that differential, bringing the state of things back to some sort of equilibrium, some sort of relief. I'm fascinated that sometimes it takes a storm to do that.

The difference between cloud and soil is hard to spot before the lightning. You can sort of feel it in the air: a charged-up scintillation, the hairs on the back of your neck, or perhaps just an intuitive glance at the sky. It's there, electric in the atmosphere, but we're okay with it, we tell ourselves; we're okay to go about our usual routines and our work while that pressure builds.

But every now and again, it takes a lightning bolt of correction to show us the need for the storm. Hundreds of thousands of volts, ancient and terrible, snaking through the air in less than half a second, burning plus to minus, earth to sky. It's no wonder the ancients thought Zeus had a temper.

The still, humid air is electrified into a wave of sound - a pulse of rapidly heating molecules warping themselves into a peal of thunder, rolling, crashing, grumbling their discontent across the valleys, the towns and the glistening rooftops.

It was soon over. Blue sky was back and the evening sun glistened from the cars and the lamppost. Gentle summer clouds hung above, where the darkness had been, and the rain steadied into barely a drip from the open window. There'll be another time for potential difference, and another storm to bring balance, certainly. 

But for the moment, the world breathed, and so did I. It smelled delicious.