Damian Robb

This morning I went for a run. I had pre-planned it. The inevitable Christmas gorging is something I’m a big fan of partaking in and thought I should preemptively offset at least a bit of it, so that when my belly’s full from too much consumption and the twin demons of guilt and regret are making their way towards me I can say ‘Well, at least I went for a run.’

I got up at around 6:30am and by seven I was dressed in my running gear and closing the door of my house behind me. The sun was low, but bright and beaming. It reached somewhere towards thirty five degrees celsius in Melbourne yesterday so even with some of that heat dissipating overnight the morning was still warm. I started my watch to record the kilometers as I ran them and my feet began rhythmically hitting the pavement. I decided that I would run ten kilometers and by the time I reached the five kilometer turnaround point I was covered in sweat. The warmth of my body felt good, and cleansing.

On the way back it started to rain. Nothing too hard, just a light sun shower after the heat of the night before. Usually, I don’t enjoy running in the rain mostly because I find it frustrating when it gets into my eyes, but this morning, with my sunglasses negating that problem, the rain was clean and refreshing. I finished the run in good spirits, my muscles sore but my body hot and alert. As I usually do after a run I decided to do a cool down walk around the park next to my house. The rain, that until this point had remained in the shower category, turned into a thunderstorm as I did so. It was gorgeous. Even with the thunder and lightning dancing above me and the thick drops soaking my already wet running gear the storm still wasn’t enough to dampen our strong Australian sun. Instead I had a stunning view of green grass under a small patch of grey sky encircled, to the horizon, by blue and sunshine. A summer storm. The heavy rain was welcome and I finally started cooling as I made my way around the deserted park. I stopped briefly under a tree to simply watch the storm as the pattern of lightning followed by thunder continued above. The rain was torrential now but the dark mass it poured out of was still ringed by the stalwart light of the sun. I stood there, hot but getting colder, red faced and wearing black, and near laughed at the beauty of it. A middle aged coupled came towards me from around the corner of the path and they too were soaked, although seemed to share the energy a thunderstorm can bring. They approached and the man made a joke about the fickleness of Melbourne weather, we shared a smile, and they stood beside me under the boughs of the tree, all of us silently watching the rain.

Tomorrow is Christmas and with that comes a certain kind of magic. On the other side of the world that magic is personified by blankets of snow, rugging up against the cold, and sharing warm fires. Here, nothing seems more appropriate that standing with strangers and watching a summer storm.

I hope you all have a magical day tomorrow.

Talk soon

Damian