The answer my friend, is blowing in the wind

Feeling tired and stressed, Jon went to bed early last night, so I stayed downstairs with my laptop and was tinkering around on the internet when, all of a sudden, the lights went out. I had my earphones on listening to some music, but heard a loud bang behind me. Removing the earphones I realised that it was a clap of thunder that I had heard – the loudest I have heard for a long time – and it became obvious that we had endured a power cut due to the promised ‘severe weather’ mentioned yesterday. Being on my laptop, of course, meant that my power had not left me due to the battery, which made it all the more weird - for a few seconds I could not make out why the lights had gone out and not my laptop!

The wind was blowing a veritable gale and the rain was coming down in torrents. Hey ho – here we go again I thought.

A little while later I went into the kitchen to get a drink of water and found Oll, with the vac, on his way outside to the car to do a spot of hoovering. Oh yes, still at work at around 10pm. Complete with plastic bags to protect any power source that was necessary he went out to finish off the Daihatsu’s makeover.

When stressed I cannot get to sleep very well and so I don’t bother to go to bed until I know that I will be able to drift off to dreamland almost instantly. Hence last night I was still wandering around at around 1am. That is actually quite early for me – it has, of late, been 2 or 3 am before I finally get between the sheets. I made my way ‘up the wooden hills to Bedfordshire’ to the sound of howling wind and rain smashing against the windowpanes.

It was of no real surprise, then, to be awoken this morning to the sound of Jon exclaiming that both the marquee and gazebo had been blown down in the wind. On top of that, the sundial had also blown over! Luckily there was no damage to the latter and Graham returned it to its rightful place with no problems. The other two, however, have been left until later as the winds are supposed to be dying down. I am not sure how the poor roses have suffered, though, as they have been a bit battered by the structures.

When Jon had risen earlier, at around 7am, to answer nature’s call all three had been standing – so it must have been a particularly heavy gust that caused the mayhem before he looked out of the bedroom window again at around 10 am and saw them collapsed. Perhaps a final terrifying gust to herald the gale’s waning? A kind of ‘that’ll teach them’ action of spite before it finally moves on to pastures new.

Bloody weather.

I guess it could have been worse – at least Ichabod’s aviary did not blow over too. That would have been quite awful. I do not believe in keeping captive wild birds on a whim, but as he is a rescue and – for his own safety - cannot be released back into the wild, I would not like to think of him wandering around in a world he knows nothing about.

The organisation of the Weird Weekends that I have been involved in have all been stressful for one reason or another – this year’s does seem to have a lot more downs than ups so far – perhaps this all will mean that it will be an especially good one?

I bet the sun don’t shine though.