What Is Beautiful About Rain?

Outside, rain.

Inside, a pile of sleeping cats.

And what is beautiful about the rain when it lashes down so? It makes the red berries on winter branches shine. There are flocks of birds in the sky. Always it is so in autumn. Already the odd redwing is here.

There’s a music to rain in the wind, a pattern to how it textures the air, blurs the windows.

I don’t think Barbara Newhall Follett was a fan of rain. She talks of sunshine and snow in her book The House Without Windows, but not of rain.

Today I read for an hour at TYF in their cabin, offered for shelter as the rain lashed the Cross Square. I will do the same next week if you care to join me. 11 am, in the Square if no rain. If rain, then in the cabin as rain and books do not mix well.

Anna and I are also organising a launch of Letters to the Earth at Solva Woollen Mill on 14th November, publication day. Starting at 2 when I will be inking an otter and gilding a leaf for a lovely lady who gave so much to the campaign to place the Welsh edition, Geiriau Diflanedif, into Welsh primary schools. Then at 3 there will be readings from Letters to the Earth and I will talk a bit about The House Without Windows and The Secret of the Tattered Shoes.

Anna has copies in now, signed. There’s two of the UK’s languages, Welsh, English ( and we are hoping for news soon on a Gaelic edition).

Also copies of The Secret of the Tattered Shoes

And there’s some copies of the first edition of The House Without Windows, which looks so pretty with its cover designed by Alison O’Toole.

I have a copy here, and would like to give it away. If you would share this post, online, or just by telling a friend, and leave me a comment telling me what it is that you find beautiful about rain, in about a week I will pick a winner and send the book, signed and dedicated, plus a few things from my studio. ( I have to action comments, so it won’t appear straight away.)

Signed books available now at Solva Woollen Mill, and please do join us, on the 14th, when I will conjure an otter in ink and gild a leaf, and on Fridays, when I will just read and welcome others to do the same. A kind of Xtinction Rebellion book club. Because creativity is the antidote to despair and books are a fantastic way to inform and escape.

I do love cats.

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