Early

I think it's shameful neglect that has made both my Christmas (or actually, Thanksgiving, if you're being picky) cacti bloom early this year: when I finally remembered to take a look at them last week, they were so dry and shrivelled that they were on the verge of expiry, so their frantic flowering was probably a last-ditch effort to perpetuate themselves. Once I'd watered them their leaves began to plump up, but almost at once several flowers either wilted or dropped altogether, so while doing the plants a favour, I made my own photographic life harder. Honestly, I'm so noble, sometimes it almost hurts.

Today was concert day for the Campden Chorus, but no-one could have predicted at the beginning of the season that this would coincide with the worst day of Storm Darragh. When I went out to final rehearsal this afternoon things weren't too bad, but by the time I was driving back home, after two and a half hours shivering inside a freezing cold church, the winds were absolutely wild, and I had to keep my wits about me to avoid all the fallen tree branches and flattened stands of ivy and bramble that were making the roads increasingly hazardous. 

Back at home, I was sitting under a blanket on the sofa with a half-pint mug of hot tea, thawing out and regaling R with details of my afternoon, when there was a sudden crash outside, and just as we reached the back door and flung it open, a flare of light from one of the power lines that runs above our garden. Then I noticed that a heavy stone patio planter had been moved several inches, and the large earthenware one next to it was smashed; and when we cautiously ventured out we discovered a large piece of corrugated iron lying on the patio steps. It turned out that half the roof of an old privy in the yard (which we use as a kind of potting shed) had been ripped off and flung across our property, and we'd been hugely lucky that it hadn't hit the house or either of the cars. We assume that the flash from the overhead wire probably came from one of the bolts that used to hold the roof panel in place being fired into the air when the panel took off.

I immediately moved my car down to the end of the drive, still intending to set off back to Chipping Campden within the hour, but we were both quite shaken by the incident, and the more we talked about it, the less I liked the idea of making a fourteen-mile round trip, on tree-lined roads, in winds that could wreak that kind of damage. I kept pondering the fact that just a few minutes before the roof panel had killed my planter, I'd been executing a 3-point turn just a couple of metres away, in the area of yard between the shed and the patio, and that if the panel had taken off at that point, it could easily have been my car - and me - that got in its way.

In the end I made the decision to stay at home - which was objectively right and sensible, but emotionally excruciating - and sent messages to the choir administrator and my nearest neighbour in the alto section to explain what had happened. By the time I'd done that, I was so upset at having pulled myself out of a concert I'd been looking forward to, and letting my voice section down at the very last moment, that I was absolutely raging, and poor R must have profoundly wished that I'd just taken the risk and gone back out into the storm.

A miserable evening for both of us was slightly lightened for me by reading Lev Parikian's Six Things, which I've quoted before and strongly recommend you to subscribe to - his weekly email is available free of charge, if you don't want to take out a paid suscription. You probably won't always like all six, but I'd be surprised if there's ever a week when at least one doesn't improve your life. My favourites this week were the three dance compilations: Dancing in Movies, Old Movie Stars Dance to Uptown Funk, and last but not least, a compilation of routines by the incomparable Christopher Walken. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did.