A visitor to Texas once asked, “Does it ever rain out here?”
A rancher replied, “Yes, it does.”
“When?” asked the visitor.
Noah carrying a stack of animals in Noah’s Ark. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
“Do you remember that part in the Bible where it rained for 40 days and 40 nights?”
The visitor replied, “Yes, I’m familiar with Noah’s flood.”
“Well,” the rancher puffed up, “we got about half an inch that time.”
source: http://www.jokebuddha.com/Visitor#ixzz2ezuhF5SP
Day Two (Night): Torrential rain, non-stop.
Day Three (Morning): Sun and strong winds.
Day Three (noon-six p.m.): Torrential rain, non-stop. No stopping. Constant, pounding, ongoing, perpetual, unchanging, relentless, monotonous, uninterrupted rain for six solid hours.
The woman camping alone next door in – I kid you not – a child’s pop-up tent, complete with the necessaries: beer fridge and TV, packed up and went home because she was flooded out. Our gazebo died and the boys had to disassemble it.
We had a back-up plan for entertainment: lunch, cards and Rhyl Sun Centre. RSC is an indoor pool with slides and waves and things. In any other country, an indoor pool with slides and waves and things on the beach front would seem daft, but we are talking about Wales. Wet, wet, wet Wales, where everyone wears cardigans over their bathing suits in August.
The Hub dropped the kids off then came back and dropped off.
I dogsat and read my Kindle. I started three books and couldn’t get in to any of them. Hundreds of books on my Kindle and I couldn’t find something new to enjoy. It was like having literary cable.
I thought for a moment: I was alone in the wilderness (the Hub was en route); there was little food left; I didn’t know or trust anyone around me.
Time to re-read The Hunger Games.
We had never seen anything like it.
The sun came out.
It made the mud caused by twelve hours’ rain the previous night become less muddy mud – enough to squelch and spray within a ten metre radius; not enough to lose a shoe.
Way hey! Way hey! Off to Rhyl for the day!
Rhyl has a beach. We did beachy things, including trekking back up from the sea to the bin with dog dirt. Twice. I’m sure I lost weight.
We ate junk food, over-priced takeaway food, and our words – we didn’t want to anger the sun so that it got into a huff and disappeared. And it didn’t, until the rain took the nightshift.
The kids wasted their money in the arcades and the shops, as every child born since the advent of the railway allowed cheap seaside excursions has done.
Spud climbed a wall right to the top and was given a free stick of rock as a reward. Later, the rain warped it and we threw it away.
The dogs loved their six-hour walk.
The Hub was too exhausted to braai in the evening, despite spending most of the day sitting down on walls, benches and the occasional stranger, so we bought fresh cooked chicken, ham shanks, salad and bread for dinner. Yummy, greasy finger food: perfect, and not a problem to clean up afterwards – we just stuck our hands out of the tent doorway and let the rain save us a walk to the utility block.
I was beginning to like Wales.
To say we’ve had a lot of rain this year is an understatement. Trawling my archives, I discover that I was complaining about rain way back in August 2010, so I dug up some facts:
It is the wettest spot on Earth (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The Rain People (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
when I completed my latest challenge.
Writing yesterday’s 101/1001 post coincided with a month’s worth of rain coming down in 24 hours (sadly, no hyperbole there). It seemed like the perfect opportunity to complete Challenge No. 20: Dance in the rain.
I put on Mango Groove’s Hometalk – the best dance track, ever; I’m having it at my funeral – ordered the Hub to pick up his camera, and stepped out into our sodden garden.
Here is the result (excuse the blurry pics – I was moving and it was raining):
If you hit the arrow quickly, you can see me dance.
I danced barefoot in the rain for 4.14 minutes. It was liberating to do something and not give a damn about what anyone else thought of me. Some of the neighbours must have noticed, given our low fences and shared walls. I don’t care. I had a blast.
There was just one problem: it was Peter Kay’s fine rain, and I wasn’t drenched.
Next time I dance in the rain, there had better be a hurricane or the Hub’s going to cop it.
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If you controlled the weather, what would it be like outside today?
One of the things I’ve always loved about Britain is the changing seasons. I like to see blossom on the trees in spring; sunshine in summer; I enjoy kicking leaves in autumn; sitting inside not freezing my butt off in winter.
It’s the height of summer here now, so it’s raining. I’d like it to be sunny. I’d like not to be sitting wrapped in a cardi, hoping it will dry up enough to put out the washing currently draped all over the house. I’d like to know it’s summer and not just a long winter punctuated with one hot day (the day I choose to cook a roast).
The Hub has the perfect system: sunshine all day; rain in the middle of the night when everyone is in bed.
Spud doesn’t care, so long as he can play football/watch football/hit me with a snowball.
Tory Boy lives in another country, so I can’t ask him. Actually, it’s not another country; it’s an hour’s drive from here; but it might as well be another country for all the time he takes to call his mother.
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There’s a hurricane in the Atlantic at the moment. That’s what I call weather. None of our British seventeen-types-of-rain-wrong-snow-on-the-line-a-hot-day-whip-off-the-vest-and-frighten-the-children wishy-washiness.
The problem with dramatic weather, however, is that it tends to rather inconvenience people unfortunate enough to live in its path; in fact, it tends to be downright vindictive. I hope those of my readers affected or likely to be affected by Hurricane Irene are well prepared, and stay safe. I don’t want a disruption to my blog reading.
For an excellent guide to hurricane preparations, read Nancy’s post on what to do. There is also a link in my blogroll so you can track hurricanes in your area.
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All this weather talk reminds me of something I once read in Stephen Pile’s The Book Of Heroic Failures; I can’t recall it exactly, but it was a tv station’s apology for their intermittent weather report:
Whether the weather can be brought to you today depends on the weather, whether we like it or not.
The original quote was much funnier but I can’t find it; I did, however, come across a Penguin worksheet for high school students based on The Book Of Heroic Failures (and the media complains exams are getting easier…!).
Here’s an excerpt from the preamble:
Stephen Pile was born in Lincolnshire in 1949. In 1977, when he was 28 years old, he said, ‘I’m never going to write a book’. The Book Of Heroic Failures was published two years later […] He therefore failed in his ambition never to write a book.
He and others started the Not Terribly Good Club of Great Britain in 1976, but it was such a success that they closed it down.
Good job he’s not in charge of the weather; all we’d have is rain in summer.
O-oh…
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Image via Wikipedia
I met a friend at a little café in Stockport for breakfast this morning – £1.60 for tea, and two free slices of toast if you order before ten a.m. It was worth going out for. It’s always worth going out for free food. I won’t mention the outrageous bus fare: £1.60 there, and another £1.60 back, but with no toast thrown in. That was topped by a thirty-minute wait at a wet bus stop because the traffic was horrendous.
I had my umbrella, of course: what self-respecting Brit woman doesn’t? Not self-respecting Brit men, though. British men don’t do umbrellas except in movies with bowler hats. They prefer to get wet. They may die of pneumonia brought on by a thorough soaking, but at least they die like men. Or, to give them their correct title, stupid men.
My umbrella is one of those see-through plastic ones the Queen made popular in the Seventies so that she and the Great Wet British Public could see each other on walkabouts.
(You know, I’ve always considered the Hub with his airline mania to be a real geek, but at least he doesn’t subscribe to ‘Umbrella World’)
My umbrella. Eye, there’s the rub. I used it yesterday and left it to dry in the downstairs toilet, propped in a corner under the bottle of liquid soap. On the way to the bus stop this morning I was pleasantly surprised to see the pounding rain pound pretty soap bubbles off its surface, obviously a result of having a clean family who always wash their hands after a comfort break. I was just admiring a huge one that sneaked under the brolly with me (bubble, not family; it’s only a small umbrella), when it popped, squirting soap shrapnel into my eye. I was so startled (and in pain), I stepped back, slipped off the pavement, and into a large and dirty puddle.
How I wish I had a dirty family. If no-one washed their hands after a comfort break, I would be eye-less-in-gauze, err, and not nursing foot rot.*
*I confess, none of that last line is true. My real medical problem is hyperboleitis.**
**Defined in Tilly’s Dictionary of Made-Up Words as an inability to blog without exaggerating for comic effect.
Can you forgive me?***
***You have to; I’m racked with guilt and heaving great wracking sobs as I type.****
****Okay, I’ve got a snotty nose from walking in the rain.*****
*****This could go on forever, you know.
Image by Gene Hunt via Flickr
I’m not a fan of running down home towns (unless the home town is run down already), but today I’m a little bit fed up with Stockport. As you would be in a town that only looks good when covered in ten inches of snow.
Today’s weather forecast: 7 hours of rain; 0 hours of sunshine.
Yesterday, the Hub and I walked the dogs in the park behind our house. I say ‘park’ but what I really mean is ‘field with a small play area and huge layer of excrement’ (hence my ongoing obsession with dog poo). Even the play area – despite a fence and a large sign saying No dogs allowed in this play area – had a humongous pile under the tyre swing. We think we know who did it: the unpleasant man who allows his grumpy golden retriever to attack the other dogs. Well, not him personally; his dog, I mean. As we walked onto the field they were exiting the play area in a cloud of steam (it’s a big dog). They were off the field before we saw the damage, or he’d have been wearing it.
How selfish a human being do you have to be to allow your dog to foul a children’s play park and leave it there? There was a recent case in the news where a dog had done its business on a slide and a little girl slid through it, got it on her hands, wiped her eyes, and went blind from the resulting Toxicara.
This year, the council planted ten new trees to brighten the park and make a dog walking route. The Hub and I have watched over the months as the trees have grown. We have also seen them disappear one by one. Three over the last weekend – for bonfire night, presumably, as the local youths seem to be taking a scorched earth policy. There are four trees left that have not been pushed, battered, bent over, hacked at or sawn off. Wonder how long they’ll last?
Come to think of it: thugs don’t like wet weather, so let it rain, let it rain, let it rain.
We have had almost non-stop rain for three days now, and for three days it has been difficult to walk the dogs. My dogs love walks but hate rain. They ran to greet the Hub at the front door the other day. When I opened it, they hurtled out, then hurtled right back in again, like a cartoon character running off a cliff.
It rained and rained and rained and rained and rained yesterday, and was as tedious as this sentence. By nine o’clock I was in my pyjamas because I knew there was no hope of a walk for them. At ten, Molly, who doesn’t even like to go in the garden to do her business on dry days, was crossing her legs and hopping on the spot.
I opened the back door to force her out and noticed it had stopped raining. Such joy! It was like the moment in Abergele the Hub told us we could give up camping.
The Hub’s CFS/ME gives him temperature issues. That’s how we found ourselves in the middle of the night in a November Stockport street: him in summer shorts and loose sweater; me in trainers and an ankle-length winter coat over my pyjamas, walking two frisky dogs.
The Hub shushed me as I said, ‘I’ve never been out at night in my pyjamas.’ ‘Shush! Everyone will know you’re a Scouser.’ ‘I hope no-one sees us,’ I said, just as the packed 309 bus passed us, with every passenger on our side of the street doing a double-take.
Of course, the real issue is: how do you see a dog poo in the dark?
Image via Wikipedia
We have a lot of stuff; we’ve always had a lot of stuff. It didn’t matter in South Africa when the Hub had a warehouse attached to his office: we stored everything there and our home looked lovely; it’s not so great now that we live in a three-bed council house. Part of the problem is that we hang on to things we might need later on, like every plug from every defunct appliance we’ve ever owned – bearing in mind that it is a legal requirement that every appliance sold in this country must come with an integrated plug, it’s like letting your older children leave home but keeping their feet in case the next one you give birth to needs spare tootsies. Okay, that’s ridiculous; but so is hanging on to twenty-five years’ worth of electric waste.
Having built and filled our garden shed twelve years ago, the stars finally conjoined yesterday to give us sunshine, everybody home with nothing to do, and me in a we can do this if we only gird our loins and get on with it mood. I needed to empty the shed (not the one pictured, but a good facsimile) so that I have somewhere to store the clutter from the kitchen (it must be emptied before they give me a new one). The clutter in the kitchen came from the hall when I painted it. The clutter in the hall came from the lounge when I painted it. The clutter in the lounge came from my inability to tie the Hub to his chair and never let him shop. I didn’t have the heart to put the clutter back in the lounge because I was able to see every wall for the first time since Spud was born. I have been shuffling utter crap from room to room for months, and yesterday I decided it must STOP.
Tilly couldn't understand where the mess was coming from...
My family hate when that happens because it means work for them, and they weren’t wrong. We sat the Hub in a comfy chair on the back step so that he could supervise the chucking-out and tell us what he really needed to keep: spare parts for his never-used scooter (we’re building our own ark here in Stockport) could stay because they will come in handy in 2027 when it is forecast we will finally have a dry summer and the scooter will need de-rusting; but three huge electric typewriters and seventeen pieces of mouldy mdf were defintely out. A box full of baby toys might have stayed if the boys were ready to make me a grandmother, but I didn’t want to encourage them so they went on the skip pile. An old tent we got from Freecycle last year was finally opened up to see if it was of any use. It was: I now have waterproof bicycle and braai covers, albeit bright purple, and three groundsheets. I couldn’t prise a Linguaphone box of 78s from the Hub’s crying arms, but I did manage to sneak out a couple of motorbike forks and carpet offcuts from a carpet we no longer have, when he was stroking the vinyl and saying Ciao, bella to himself.
We finished up with several piles:
We moved the stuff in the house that we really wanted to keep into the shed, where it will no doubt stay for another twelve years until we get our next sunny day. The kitchen isn’t quite cleared but it’s getting there. The hall isn’t quite cleared but it’s getting there. The lounge – well, you get the idea. I’m doing my best and if it sometimes feels as if I’m holding back an avalanche with sheer will and a roll of bin bags, at least it gives me something to blog about.
I Googled ‘declutter’ and I came across some excellent tips; I will give you the best ones and the sites they came from:
http://zenhabits.net/15-great-decluttering-tips/
http://zenhabits.net/18-five-minute-decluttering-tips-to-start-conquering-your-mess/
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1211647/How–declutter-home.html
http://www.myhouseandgarden.com/declutter.htm
Mummy promised that he would grow a neck in the next year or so
Spud is fourteen today. I can hardly believe it…not that it’s fourteen years since I gave birth to him, but that he’s survived fourteen years of my cooking and slapdash care (if I can machine-wash a mobile phone, just think of how many near-misses my kids have had over the years).
Spud’s seventh birthday. He was Pikachu; I was Bridget Jones, one-tonne-six goddess.
The neck finally kicked in but she suggested he lose the glasses, not knowing that Harry Potter was about to explode onto the scene
We hope he is going to have a nice day, but the signs are not good:
I’m just kidding. He’s in a great mood and loves his blue tooth ear piece thing for the PS3, six-pack of Pepsi Max, and MP4 player. We will buy him a cake today (chocolate, as instructed) and the Hub is treating us to a Chinese takeaway for dinner. Spud is at the match tomorrow so we are taking him and three friends – if he remembers to invite them; he’s getting forgetful in his old age – to the movies and afterpizza, next weekend.
I am a little fat. I like food; what can I say? I have dull hair: mousey. I don’t wear much make-up and have no need of a dressing table. If I look like a bag lady, I chose my own clothes. If I look nice, the Hub picked them for me. Despite all this, I am a little vain. This photograph is from 2003. I had to go back that far to find one of me that I liked. But I don’t really care: my husband still thinks I’m beautiful and if he doesn’t, he loves me enough to lie about it. I’m lucky. I have two boys. They never lie to me. Still, you can't have everything.
The Laughing Housewife 
I have the funniest readers in the blogosphere (not necessarily ha ha…)