Come rain

In 1985 I worked on a gardening gang with Frank, a Polish bloke who had lied about his age for some years to fend off retirement. He was very old, very knowledgeable and very canny about the weather and the workplace. A wage was worth more than the pension, so he wound down his days doing about the same amount of work in his backyard (which was a block away from the depot) as he did out in our patch - which included all the public parks and wastelands in 3 or 4 big suburbs. Sometimes a few of us tagged along to help him. He always treated me as his equal, regardless of age (50 year gap), gender, lifestyle, all that. His wife just thought I was weird, to work with men, but she fed me and gave me bottles of jam 'for later'.

Frank had a lot to say, but he rarely spoke full sentences in English - he used clusters of five words or less, and packed them with meaning using other tricks: world class comic timing, facial expressions, full body gestures. The longest sentence I remember him using regularly was:
'Slow down, girl: same money'.

Sometimes he would fold both arms over his shovel, point to the sky with his bristly grey moustache, and say 'come rain' matter of factly. Even when the sky was cloudless, it would be raining within half an hour. I never saw him get it wrong.

This morning, to my delight, it has come rain.