THE FINE RAIN

There have been many attempts at seeing the future but this is the first I've come on where drinking water has to be dehydrated!!!

Grandfather Jim looked at his grandson, young James, and smiled at his innocence.

"There was a time," he explained, "when you would have gone outside into the wide world on a day like this, and would have run and jumped and splashed in the rain!" He sighed, and smiled at old memories. "Ah, those were the days," he added thoughtfully.

"But Grandfather, the rain!" protested the young boy. "Nobody can run in the rain and still live, you taught me that!"

"Ah, but times have changed, little James," sighed his grandfather. "I'm talking about the way things were, long ago when I was like you, knee-high to a grasshopper! Now the rain is what it is, but once upon a time it was something different: something very different!"

"How can rain be different, grandfather?" asked James. "You're teasing me, aren't you? Trying to make out that rain hasn't always been rain! Why, soon you'll be telling me that it was wet!"

"But it was," smiled Grandfather Jim. "I remember going out in the rain! I remember getting wetter than wet on warm sultry days, and laughing with my mates as we ran and skipped across the park, with the raindrops twinkling like little jewels as they splashed on our faces and ran down our skin in little sparkling rivers!" He shook his head, almost in sorrow. "Those were the days, those were," he sighed," and the shame of it is you'll never see them in your lifetime, not even if all the greenest policies get adopted by the Government and a real effort is made to clean things up, which'll never happen anyway."

James wrinkled his nose and shook his head. "I wouldn't like that!" he said. "I wouldn't like being made wet by the rain! It's best that it's dry like it is, all glowing dust and shards of pain to warn us off!"

"That's it, sonny," moaned the grandfather, "you've hit the nail right on the head with those words, you have. It's glowing and dry, and it shouldn't ever be either of those things. By rights, rain ought to be wet!"

"But you said the rain was sparkling, grandfather,” protested James. "You said it ran down your face in little sparkling rivers!"

"I did, but it was a different kind of sparkling back then," said grandfather soberly. "It reflected the light of the sun and the moon and the stars according to the time of day. These days the rain glows all on its own, and every drop that comes down is so covered with radioactive dust that it's dryer than an old bone, and glows! Things are a whole lot different from what they were in the old days - those that some might call the good days!"

"Well, I'm glad it's like it is, grandfather," grinned James. "I'm glad that the rain isn't wet and I'm glad you can see it coming from the way it glows, especially at night, when it's beautiful."

Grandfather Jim shook his head sadly. "There's nothing so beautiful as a summer shower of real rain," he whispered. "There's nothing so sweet as the way they used to smell, the way it seemed that a thirsty world needed every drop that fell like so many jewels from the clouds. Now all that happens is the rain falls and the world dies a little bit more and we all huddle indoors, unable to go out, existing on our memories of sweeter and greener times."

There was a moment's silence, then James said, almost sadly, or so it seemed to his grandfather, "I can't remember them, grandfather. All I can remember is what is, and that's beautiful too: the way the rain shines with its own warning light, all green and special, and the lakes that bubble and shine, and the pink skies, always pink like girls' clothes, and the graveyard down the road, growing every day, taller and deeper like a monument on the world, all so beautiful, grandfather."

Grandfather Jim tousled the boy's hair, but a tear, old as he was, sneaked out of the corner of one eye. "I'm sure it is," he agreed. "If only you could taste, for one gorgeous moment, a glass of pure spring water, with the age of the world in every drop, and the whole thing like a liquid diamond, refreshing, perfect, as if it were the first ever water from the first ever spring."

Young James shivered. "Grandfather, now I know you're teasing!" he said. "And you've made me thirsty! I need a drink!"

And he went to the cupboard under the stairs and helped himself to a whole tablet of dehydrated water before sauntering, small-boy like, to his sleeping bag and lying down, waiting for it to fill him with the liquid of life as he slept.