RAIN, SUSPENDED

You should see the sky today. There are thick white cumulus clouds bobbling along the horizon, a whole bank of them behind the rooftops and TV aerials. They look like candyfloss.

Above them are flat layers of altocumulus - tiny little chuffs of cloud that stretch across the sky in trails as though they've been puffed out by an engine and they're just hanging there in the blue sky.

Higher still, the cirrocumulus and cirrus clouds are whipping the top of the sky into a cold, icy frenzy. It's as though someone took a paintbrush laden with white and whiffled with the edge of it across the bright azure canvas.

All of this of course is lit by the sun, which is currently warm through the window and beaming onto the lush green of spring-leaves and blossom.

It's been raining. For some reason, this year's April showers were delayed until May, and so instead of the warm, coat-free afternoons we usually get at this time of year, it's been wet and sunny in intervals - dark grey clouds shifting and moving, lit by the sun but carrying rain.

I'm feeling overwhelmed.

I can't explain it today - just a sort of heaviness to everything, not necessarily all sad, but not quite joyful either. There is, it seems, a lot in my head all at once - changes ahead I don't feel ready for; decisions to make that are hurtling towards me whether I want to think about them now or not. It all feels very heavy - like a raincloud, I suppose: one that is very much lit by the sun, but also carrying its weight in rainy days to come.

They say you should take a moment to look up at the clouds from time to time - just to remark that that one looks like a pig, or a baby elephant; the one behind it looks like an old man chasing a rabbit, or whatever you see. Apparently, it's good for your mental health - a welcome distraction from the woes of the world below.

I might try it sometime. The way the weather is at the moment though, I'd better take a coat with a hood and my waterproof trousers! All I see is rain, suspended.