I associate kissing in the rain with my youth. Coming out of the pub to find a torrent of wetness. He grabs me and he holds my face in his hands, and we kiss the sodden life out of each other. Or an awkward silence at my front door, avoiding the ‘want to come in for coffee’? question. I stand motionless as the heavens open, and he plants a damp kiss on my lips before disappearing into the night. And a summer evening by the sea, sat on a wall in our kagoules. Huddled together against the elements we squeeze the juice from each other as the rain falls down on our exploding young hearts.

As we get older we tend to get a bit more pragmatic. Instead of lingering on wet pavements, enjoying a romantic embrace, we are more likely to head for the warm and the dry, where we can get on with the more urgent act of fucking. You never know when your last chance might be.

But sometimes at night when I hear the rain battering against the windowpane, I am transported back to my teenage years. Strolling down the glistening streets, we stop on every corner to kiss and touch each other’s wet hair, to taste the rainwater as it skips across our tongues. We are drenched in our youth. And we walk between the raindrops back to your door.