A picture I found on a web news page. (I drive up and down this road every day…that white “box” in the middle of the picture is a refrigerator!)
The damage bill from Friday’s downpour could run into tens of millions of dollars. (User submitted: Nikki Bourke)
Saint Swithun was much-blamed for the weather when I lived in England, although that was before people had heard about Global Warming and the Greenhouse Effect. In fact, I know quite a few of us would have welcomed Global Warming during the Great Miners’ Strike in the 70s !
The miners went on strike in the winter and the dustmen (rubbish collectors or, as they are known in Australia, garbologists) chose a hell-hot summer to make their protest, to better drive home their particular points. A certain logic in that, I suppose…
But back to old Swithun … we have not had 40 days of rain, of course, barely 3, but the chaps at the weather bureau who can do all sorts of clever sums with “proper” long divison and compound interest and all that (brain switches to right hemisphere!) tell us that we have had very nearly the volume that we could normally expect in that time. Some of us are still having it.
Wherever you are in the world, you have probably seen pictures of us on TV news, or at least read of it in newspapers, so I shant go on.
The good news.
I have been letting the dynamic duo run free, confident that the rain would keep them pretty close to the house. In fact, for a while, they just sat on the front deck and stared, wide-eyed as only kittens can, at the torrent falling like a curtain from the roof.
Eventually, they came downstairs, but did not go far until the downpour eased. It would be a different matter if they were on heat and looking to get a little action! I think I’ll be making an appointment with “you-know-who” next week.
Well, time to check on the drainage channels again, folks…
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