Raining men?

There was some very loud thunder last night which I did hear unlike the night before. It was earlier in the night so although in bed I had not fallen asleep. The wind was very high too and the rain was beating on the windows. I seized a quiet, almost dry, moment between squalls at around midnight and nipped into the garden to rescue a garden chair which was blowing around. I think Cleo thought I'd lost it as I brought it into the dining room.

There was more prodigious rain again today. My as yet unpruned roses, which are now in the midst of a lake!, are still unpruned. If I don't get a move on the prunings are likely not to be collected until the end of January as garden waste collections finish on Thursday this week.

I lazed about this morning then at about 1pm spotted a break in the rain so drove down to pick up an order from Waitrose. It was very busy though with about 30 people queuing making good use of the supplied umbrellas! I decided against joining them but not to waste my trip to Stockbridge I went to visit the charity shops. One of my purchases, got me very excited and will be the subject of an EB in the future I'm sure. I managed a couple of miles of wandering around which is helpful.

The Water of Leith, as you can see in my blip is very high. The inset shows the usual height of the river on the life sized Anthony Gormley figure, somewhere between his ankles and his knees, today it was at his shoulders. Originally (I think) the figures were hinged and acted as depth gauges and had the ability to tilt. I think that feature disappeared when they were removed then reinstalled a number of years ago.

I've put in a couple of extras of the river taken from the other side of the bridge. The walkway is underwater. Some blippers who do sterling work clearing the river and banks will have a big job ahead of them I fear. I wonder if the force of the water could have pulled out the Himalayan Balsam by the roots and thrown it out into the salt water of the Forth and the North Sea. That might kill it off.

I managed to stay dry for the couple of hours I was out which was good, passing Waitrose on the way back though, the queue had not gone down any and the umbrellas were still in use.

I can't believe we're at the 5th of December already, the Christmas cards have started to arrive! I did though successfully burn only today's section of the advent candle, having burned days 1-4 on the 1st of the month. Last year's candle burned for a couple of hours each night, this year's needs only 5 minutes so I'll need to stay focused.

Keep safe and well every body. I wonder if the mass student testing will skew the results as so many are likely to show up while being asymptomatic. Hope everybody gets home safely for the Christmas break.