Aftermath

It may be an indicator of the resumption of more normal weather that I opened my bedroom window wide this morning (it was jolly chilly!) to take a photo of a barely-light slate-flat sea and hardly less bright sky - too commonplace a photo to bore you with here. In fact it was so normal that I decided we were going to run out of essential items of clothing (see how delicately I put that?) if I didn't put a washing on. (The EIs numbered 21 in total.)  I felt utterly unable to rush my breakfast, however, and then felt a desire to clean the sink before I left the kitchen. Then there was Italian to do, and then it was time for coffee ...

But then I could procrastinate no longer. The debris-scattered garden beckoned, not exactly enticingly but insistently. It kept raining at this point. I tackled the task clad, rather pleasingly, in garments I've had since last century - Rohan Warm Goas, if anyone remembers them, a lilac slightly padded anorak with almost-knackered popper fastenings, a waxed cotton cap with a leather peak of rakish proportions ... I righted the bird table, noted the bits that had been smashed, re-hung the feeders (the birds almost immediately began to gather), moved the pile of chairs to their rightful corner and cut off the ruined cover. Himself then took over mending the bird table while I took a big blue plastic sack that had fetched up in a border out to the front garden and filled it with the contents of someone else's bin that had scattered all over the grass and in the bushes - right down to a square plastic bin with a Union flag painted on its sides and a big hole in the bottom - quite symbolic, really. By the time I was finished I was cold and wet, particularly on my rear because I'd been bending over and my jacket wasn't long. 

So far so virtuous. In the afternoon we had a nosey walk down to the East Bay (as in yesterday's blip) and took the photos of the damage that are the left and central photos above. Quite a mess, really. The top right photo shows how far the sea penetrated up the lane from the West Bay to the town, and the bottom, quite out of keeping with the rest, shows Himself testing the organ in church. 

We ended our walk at church because there are trees down and power lines down and though the church has some electricity half the points aren't working (don't ask) and we wanted to see if the organ was affected. The speakers behind the old organ pipes are off, but Himself managed to switch on the auxiliary ones inside the organ itself and lo: we can have singing tomorrow. There will be no heating and not a lot of light, and no amplification, but we have a priest and an organist and people with sensible (as opposed to polite) clothes and where two or three ...

But that's for tomorrow. We'll phone the builder on Monday about our roof, but until then I'm turning my mind to other things. Birthdays. Holidays. Maybe not holidays. Unlucky to speculate. But there's a literary/translation event in Salerno in May to which I've been invited, and I was already thinking of Sorrento ...