Wednesday, January 16, 2008

The pot of gold at the end of the...

“I’m surprised there isn’t a rainbow,” I said as my friend pulled out on the Route d’Hermance on the way to lunch. The sun, which poured though the rain, created a silver grey sky.

“But there is.”

I turned and looked and over the lake was a rainbow that spanned the road up and beyond the village at the top of the hill, and it was one of the fattest rainbows I’ve ever seen.

A January rainbow is unusual. I think of August as rainbow season. When I was still working many times I’d emerged from the office to summer sunshine and before I could complete a 20 minute walk home, violent rain would leave me drenched. Still I would go to my balcony and watch the rainbow or rainbows appear over the château across the street.

And of course there was the night I took the evening commuter bus into France. The other passengers were serious-faced, tired after a workday in stuffy unair-conditioned buildings. They ignored the sudden rain storm that had started during the few second we were in the border tunnel.

Then someone exclaimed “Regardez. Attention.” On the left side of the bus was a double rainbow and then a third appeared. Passengers standing scrunched down to look out the window and soon people were chatting and smiling…the rainbow cure to grumpiness.

Once again I was caught without my camera (I will never learn), but my friend and I joked about the pot of gold and we did find it...or two: A parking place where parking is almost impossible and a Thai restaurant that we passed by accident.

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