There are days when the sky behaves impeccably all morning. A little grey perhaps, a little oppressive, but otherwise nothing to worry about. People leave their bicycles outside, hang out the washing and say to one another: ‘It’ll probably be fine.’
That is a sentence the weather has never had much respect for.
Around noon, the heavens decided Makkum could use an extra canal. Not by digging one, but by pouring the water straight down. As if someone above had tipped over a bucket and then found several more they had forgotten were there.
Within minutes, streets turned into waterways. Cars made a modest attempt to behave like motorboats. Cyclists discovered that rainwear is not designed for situations in which the water also comes from below.
The drains worked bravely on. You could almost hear them thinking: lads, I’m doing my best, but this wasn’t in the job description.
Neighbours appeared in their doorways. Not to help one another, that happened naturally later, but first to agree that this really was ‘quite a shower’. The Dutch have a remarkable talent for describing even half an inland sea with a certain sobriety.
A child thought it was wonderful. A dog rather less so. The cat had seen it all coming an hour earlier and was already sitting high and dry on a windowsill, wearing the expression of someone wondering why humans are always so late.
After a while, the cloudburst moved on. As if it had suddenly remembered that Friesland contains other villages too.
The water slowly subsided. Brooms appeared. Buckets too. People laughed about wet shoes and photographed streets that had briefly imagined they were canals.
And tomorrow?
Tomorrow Makkum will simply be Makkum again.
Only for a while, someone at a birthday party will still say: ‘Remember that cloudburst? The one on 20 August?’
And everyone will reply: ‘Of course. That was when the sky briefly forgot it was supposed to stay above us.’