Stormy weather – but still sun up in the sky
I’m British, so please don’t mind this long musing on the weather. It’s our national sport, after all.
When I lived in Tanzania, weather was an event. Rains would come and last for months, making some roads impassable and even sweeping away bridges, sending me on the long bumpy dirt road home, manoeuvring mud and hoping my windscreen wipers would stay the course. It was not unusual to arrive at places soaked to the skin in the rainy season, especially as my car had a leaky sunroof. Somehow the excuse of ‘I can’t come to school today, the road from my house has been flooded’ became totally normalised.
When I lived in Singapore, weather was also an event. Arriving in the autumn of 2019, the city-state was struck down by The Haze (please say this in the same way that you’d say The Blob – run, don’t walk). ‘Climate patterns’ rendered the air thick, grey and choking. The air pollution was so bad that we were recommended to stay indoors. Instead, I went wakeboarding with friends. Wakeboarding is already a frightening experience for someone as lacking in coordination as I am, but when you can’t see the boat that’s tugging you along, it takes on a whole new dimension of fear.
Here in France, we also unexpectedly lived through a weather event: an actual tornado (in July!) that ripped up trees and left a trail of destruction in its wake. I remember looking out of the window and thinking, ‘Why is someone chucking buckets of water at our house?’ When the storm cleared, we thanked our lucky stars that the tree had fallen onto the road and not onto our car. It all felt very apocalyptic.
Last weekend, we had what I would term a weather happening. A storm with fantastic forked lightning that endured for several hours and hail that thwacked against our windows (although thankfully not as emphatically as the marble-sized hailstones in Paris). The look of sheer panic on my boyfriend’s face as he watched the hail batter the newly erected greenhouse was a sight to behold. The greenhouse weathered the storm and the seedlings live to fight another day!
The only minor disaster was being so busy watching the hail that we forgot about our leaking chimneys. Once we remembered, we leapt into action with buckets and towels, kicking toys out of the way in our haste. At one point, my boyfriend told me, ‘Oh there are hailstones coming into the office upstairs,’ and we chuckled, because you have to really, don’t you? In the face of nature and weather and the things we can’t really control. In this wonderful, leaky old house that we love.
What might the next weather event be? I’m praying for my 6-month pregnant self that it won’t be another 40-degree canicule in August (there’s a new French word for you if you’re learning). Whatever it is, I’ll be sure to let you know. Thanks for being here!