The wind is fairly whistling up my chimney at present, and I've just had a phone call telling me that rain is blowing under the south "Priest's door" of one of the churches and has soaked the rather fine curtain hanging across it. The caller than told me he had lifted the curtain up over the adjacent pew so that it can drip-dry.
Certainly it's unusual here for us to have a southerly gale. Normally it sweeps in from the west and howls across the fields. Today it's hitting the front of the house, so it's just as well that yesterday some emergency repair work was carried out to the top corner of the front wall where the bricks under the eaves were falling out!
Hmm - the double-glazed windows just rattled with that gust, and the lobby door banged shut. Let's hope the old and hollow apple trees survive ..."Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!
You cataracts and hurricanoes spout
Till you have drench'd our steeples, drown'd the cocks!"
(King Lear. Act 3. Scene 2)
It is a troublesome storm, but not as troublesome as the one that hit the south coast when you and I were in SW France in, I think, 1986. We, and two others, were dallying in Biarritz, watching the seas get wilder and wilder, and seeing the horizon turn dark. We drove inland, returning to Monflanquin, stopped at a cafe for a "liitle something" and tuned in to BBC Radio 4 on Long Wave (as it use to be there) to learn that a hurricane had swept across the southern counties.
ReplyDeleteI believe we made some reassuring phonecalls, and had extra cognac, after dinner that evening!
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ReplyDelete(The above post was removed because I can't spell or type! Here's the corrected version.)
ReplyDeleteI think you'll find it was 1987. I've a photo of Biarritz taken that day with the slate-grey skies. I'll see if I can dig it out and post it here. I remember we sat in a cafe and watched the subsequent torrential downpour, and the svelte ladies splashing their way through the flooded streets in their designer footwear!
You are right, of course. It was the year I was priested. If you can find that photo I would love to see it!
ReplyDeleteA piece of trivia that relates to that pilgrimage: We listened to the BBC on a small transistor radio that, owing to another radio of mine conking out, I bought in Poole. I still have that radio and it works perfectly!
By the way, I saw nothing wrong in the first post, but at my time of ministry that means nothing!