Rain doesn’t begin to describe it

 

But first, a word from our sponsor:  YAAAAAAAAAAAAAY.  FRELLING HOLIDAY IS PAST.  IT IS DONE.  IT IS GONE.  FRESH BEAN SPROUTS IN OUR ORGANIC-GROCER DELIVERY TODAY.  Holidays are overrated.  I eat A LOT of fresh raw stuff, including a two-or-three-apples-a-day habit and raw bean sprouts in my lunch-salad or salad-lunch every day, that’s EVERY DAY, and I like a few fresh herbs too, okay?  And while the apples keep on, er, rolling, salad becomes BORING when this frelling winter holiday thing happens and you have to get by on turkey and Christmas pudding for WEEKS.*  I’ve been jonesing hard for bean sprouts.**  THE DROUGHT IS OVER.

. . . And how. The monsoon is back, with knobs on.  Literally:  We’ve had an artillery-barrage of hail at least twice today,  BANGITTY-BANGITTY-BANGITTY-BANGITTY-BANGITTY-BANGITTY, which I suppose could count as assisting in the winter garden tidy-up where if you’re a good gardener*** you cut a lot of stuff down† and put it on your compost heap, if any, or haul it off to the town compost heap and let them deal with it and sell it back to you next year.  My (untidied) garden is a lot shorter than it was this morning, and I am going to be CRANKY if the hail managed to cut down the hippeastrum buds—it’s monsoon temperature too, so the tropical jungle is all outdoors, including this Christmas’ hippeastrums which I, cough cough, didn’t get planted promptly cough cough cough.††  But as far as composting is concerned . . . I think what is happening in my back garden is more sort of an auto-mulch.

I managed to get the hellhounds hurtled relatively rain-free, barring the footpath, um, bridge over the ford on the far end of town, where the river was cruising at above Converse All Star level and the hellhounds and I clung to each other so we wouldn’t be washed downstream.  But the hellterror and I got hammered.  It’s been come and go all day and we left between black clouds, but that’s the best you can do, so you just wear your raincoat and hope.

Hope failed in this case.  The rain quickly became undesirably small-hard-fist-like and then the frelling hail started.  Hellterror and I took shelter on someone’s porch and watched the hail battering parked cars and the wind trying to pull more trees over.  Eventually when the hail went away to flatten some other town we made a dash for it through the teeming rain—hellterror kept trying to stop under something that ought to be shelter—why doesn’t this tree have a ROOF on it??—and we got home sodden and squelching.

Can we have some nice weather please?  I want to go bell-ringing tomorrow.

* * *

* I have found some chocolate mints that are . . . pretty good, although they aren’t what the old Green & Black’s was and is no more.  They have a serious drawback however which is that at my normal rate of (chocolate) consumption they would cost me TWO POUNDS A DAY.  I don’t think even I can face a fourteen-pound-a-week chocolate habit.  Moan.

** I know I could make my own.  But it requires counter space and all my kitchen counters are full of (a) interesting dog treats^ and (b) magazines^^.  When KES in hard copy and ebook form(s) earns me a million pounds I will put a conservatory with a scullery at one end on Third House and then I will grow my own fresh herbs and my own bean sprouts.

^ The poor hellterror’s training has fallen into a black hole the last few weeks.  Last night for the first time in too long I sat down on the floor with a handful of Interesting Dog Treats and she knew EXACTLY WHAT THAT MEANT.+ It’s a pity I was not prepared to take a video of a mini bull terrier trying to sit, lie down, stand and give me all four feet simultaneously.++

+  She was as excited as I was about the bean sprouts.

++ I had started trying to train her to roll over, but Southdowner had warned me this was liable to be somewhat intoxicating to the bullie personality so I had dialled down to trying to teach her dead dog.  Our dead dog last night was very unconvincing.

^^ Especially knitting.  I usually manage to throw the rest of them out when I’ve read them.  I admit the ‘when’ can be a problem.

*** Any good gardeners on this blog?  If so, shut up.  I don’t want to know.

† Leaving a few attractively architectural stands of this and that for the birds and hedgehogs^ and spiders and things.^^

^ I wish the triple-blasted hedgehog in the churchyard WOULD HURRY UP AND HIBERNATE.  And then maybe wake up in March with a yen for . . . Dorset.  Or Portugal.+  Hedgehogs are territorial, and this one is recognisably a small one, so I’m assuming it’s the same one.  The same stupid one who can’t seem to learn to hide behind a gravestone or a tree when he sees the hellhounds coming.  ARRRRRGH.  I’m also wondering why no one has yet called the cops one of these nights at one or two (or three) o’clock in the morning when some woman is screaming NO NO NO NO NO NO NO!!!!! in the churchyard.++  I guess they all think, oh, that’s Robin, yelling at her hellhounds again, and put pillows over their heads.+++  Chaos won’t pick up the little round ruffled-out thing, but Darkness will—delicately—but English hedgehog spines are nothing like the diabolical barbs that rhinoceros-sized Maine porcupines damage the local dog population with.  I don’t think there’s any harm done on either side here but the hedgehog can’t be enjoying it so why doesn’t it learn to AVOID these encounters?

+ Hey, it could stow away.

++ Sometimes I see it first and march us firmly past.  Sometimes I don’t see it first.

+++ This may be my urban background but I find it a little disturbing that no one has ever tried to find out what’s going on.

^^ Not bats, so far as I know.  They’re all in trees and hollow walls and belfries and similar.  But they probably eat some of the creepy-crawlies hanging out in your long grass.

†† Or the indoor hyacinths.  Cough.