It has been raining.
Huge black thunderclouds gathered over my washing this morning, and we had to rush around to get everything in before enormous heavy raindrops splashed all around us.
By standards of thunderstorms it was not an earth shaker. My favourite thunderstorm was the one which hit the house we lived in in France, which woke us up with a massive bang and a sizzling flash, and fried every electrical thing we owned.
Things were more primitive in those days. We did not have masses of technological things, in fact we didn’t even have sufficient electrical capacity to run a shower. I could not even have imagined a remote-controlled hoover, so it wasn’t quite as bad as it would have been today.
All the same, we obliged our mystified children to unplug their more costly electrical items from the mains this afternoon, just in case.
We went back to bed for our daytime snooze during the thunderstorm, because it seemed like the best thing to be doing. We slept, warmly and damply, whilst it crackled and thumped all around us. When we woke up it was still drizzling, but warm, and everywhere was hot and thick with the scent of the garden and the earth and the flowers.
I am not going to write a long entry tonight, because we are on the taxi rank and very busy. There are people everywhere, and we still seem to have quite a few police with guns milling about amongst them.
This has surprised me, because of course it is Ramadan, and there is not a single burqa or devout beard to be seen anywhere. If you decided to be a Muslim terrorist in Windermere at the moment you would not be difficult to spot. Perhaps the police are here to sort out the traffic problems. I have occasionally wished for a gun for this purpose.
I am on the taxi rank, listening to the sounds of people talking and laughing outside the bars. Sound is travelling easily because of the warm stillness of the evening. The countryside is silent and misty in the damp twilight. It is the sort of night when you could believe in magic.
The picture is taken just along the side of the road. I am going to stop writing now, because I have been interrupted so often that it is difficult to be coherent.
I just thought I wanted to say how very contented I am with my life. The younger me would have been terribly envious of the grown up me. The children are home, and when the bank holiday is over we will be able to have a few days being together. It is a warm summer evening, and life is quiet and good.
See you tomorrow.
