the dreadful wind and rain

Another pulse of wind and rain from the remnants of hurricane Gonzalo is blowing through.  A moment ago water was travelling almost horizontally past the window in dense lumps, as if thrown out of a bucket.  The branches of the little oak tree, still in full leaf, are tossing madly but so far the trunk remains thankfully rooted in the soil.

I made preparations yesterday, putting the parasol from the table by the conservatory away in the garage while it was still dry, and before it could blow into the wood, and lifting the wooden chairs down on to the lawn so that a particularly vicious gust couldn't send them crashing through the window.  I restaked a crab apple 'Red Sentinel' whose stake had rotted off at ground level.  It's growing in an especially arid spot in the gravel, and not doing awfully well, so I must give it another dose of fish, blood and bone, but in the meantime I didn't trust it to support itself in the teeth of the gale.  We made sure that laptops, tablets and phones were fully charged, so that if we lost power we'd have at least some internet via the battery driven dongle, and I am relieved that we had the big window replaced, so it is less likely to burst inwards in the worst of the gusts like the beginning of a horror film.

Nobody shut down the wind turbine on the neighbouring farm.  They usually do, when storms are forecast, but it was whirling as if on spin cycle this morning.  Viewed through a rain spattered glass pane the whole structure seemed to writhe in a very disconcerting fashion, and I was waiting for the blades to suddenly and horribly shoot right off, but they didn't, and I got bored with watching after a while.

I was going to use the rainy day to make a cake, but my clockwork has run down.  After an unusually packed spell in my diary, where I was supposed to be doing something every single day for over a week, today I was not due to do anything at all, and my body announced that it still had a cold and wasn't going to.  The Systems Administrator vacuumed the floors and gave the kitchen and hall a quick mop, for which I am extremely grateful, but I am spending the day rooted to the sofa, browsing though the catalogue of the Georgians exhibition and making a mess of the difficult sudoku.  I really don't have the energy to make a cake, and anyway it would only be an encapsulated ball of germs.  I'm not ordering gravel either, in case I get in a muddle and end up with the wrong thing or on the wrong day.  Ditto tickets for the Rembrandt exhibition.  Sometimes you need to take a breather.