A nice day for a wander. Which way will you go, how will you travel and will you find the rainbow before the weather changes?
Silly Saturday – Wandering Ways
weather
Sunday Seaside
It is that time of year when Bournemouth council, or more accurately BCP Council now ( Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole ) tells us by how much our beach hut rent has gone up, with various explanations as to why. We were on the waiting list for six years and I guess most beach hut people will pay up rather than lose the six foot by six foot piece of concrete they rent. It’s best not to calculate the cost per minute of sitting in the sun, making a cup of tea or having your own private changing room. There are people who go every day, but most of us have other things to do, places to go and gardens looking accusingly at us. I had not visited since last year, though I have walked past to make sure it was still there. The council does not own our huts and how ever much we have paid, the hut is worth nothing if you can’t unlock it. Weather and salty air play havoc with padlocks, whether they have keys or a combination lock and pulling the shackle out can be as impossible as pulling Excalibur from the stone if you are not the future King Arthur.
Luckily I brought WD 40 from home. I have never known what WD 40 is actually made of, but I love the scent and apparently WD and duct tape are all you need to solve most DIY problems. There is a can of WD 40 in the beach hut, but that is not much use if you can’t get in… I used a lot of WD 40 and had to resort to going away to wash half a can of it off my hands then sneaking back, when the second padlock wasn’t looking, to open it.
When you walk down here it feels like being on holiday.
When you see your patch of sea you know it was worth the money and the struggles with the padlocks.
As the padlocks soak up WD 40 and you soak up the winter sun and eat your sandwiches you know it was worth it.
Then after two bites of your sandwich the weather changes, your tea gets cold and you wonder if your friends will regret saying they would ‘pop in’ for a cup of tea. This is why you keep blankets at the beach hut…
…but the sun will probably come out again before it goes down.
Silly Saturday Skies
Inside, Outside, Upside Down into 2023…
Silly Sunday – Rain and Reflections
Silent Sunday
Don’t Mention The Weather
We were on a college summer camp on Rottnest Island in the middle of the Indian Ocean, well only 18 kilometres from Fremantle, Western Australia, but one of the girls had to be airlifted off by helicopter as she had heatstroke. Happy days – when we emigrated to Australia in 1964 nobody worried about skin cancer or staying hydrated. Fortunately my parents were aware the sun was hot. Dad was out in Egypt after WW2 before he was demobbed and told of ’idiots’ being stretchered out with third degree burns after sun bathing. Fortunately my parents avoided the beach after being taken to Scarborough Beach by our sponsors on our first day in Australia. Huge waves and hot sand did not appeal and we went to pleasant shady spots by the River Swan.
Unfortunately school outings were gloriously free of sun hats and sun lotion and I recall an early outing when we spent the whole day on the beach and next day my nose peeled and bled! Outings with youth groups on hot days were often followed by me feeling sick the next day; setting off without any money and probably a picnic with a plastic bottle of cordial, I obviously didn’t drink enough. At school we did have plenty of water fountains, I didn’t spend my whole time dehydrated, but my sister recalls that if you were thirsty when you were out you stayed thirsty. I’m sure other people were buying bottles of coke and cool drinks of lurid colour, but we were not.
Our current heatwave has brought endless dire warnings of the dangers of going out – or staying inside homes not designed to cope with hot weather. Modern parents never let their children out without a bottle of water, but they should not panic – if Prince George could sit in the heat of Wimbledon dressed in a jacket and tie there is no need to pamper children.
How is the weather where you are?
Beach Hut Drama
Friday Flash Fiction 111 – Plunging
Is he going in, surely not…
Yes he is, fully clothed.
Should I do something?
I can’t stop him, I can only watch helplessly from the cliff top.
There’s no one else around in this awful weather and the rain beating against my face makes it impossible to see him properly now.
Impossible to see if the man now being knocked over by the diagonal waves is trying to retreat back to the shore or allowing himself to be taken.
I came out without my phone, to escape from technology, to drown my worries in the storm. Has the man out there chosen a more drastic way to drown his thoughts?
Twosday – a Tale of Two Tiles
Nothing much happens on Tuesdays, except perhaps a special date. Today is 22-2-22, but if I don’t hurry up and post this it will be Wednesday, except in the Americas where it will still be Tuesday, but written 2-22-22.
The previous few days were more eventful as we had three storms in a row. Since the Met Office started naming storms we seem to have them more often, the aim being to make us take them seriously. On Thursday we were still thinking ‘not a nuther storm coming, up to E already, Eunice…’
But soon we were receiving RED warnings! Yes, just when you thought it was safe to go out again after Covid / chemotherapy / knee operation / kidnap by aliens – delete as appropriate, we were being instructed to stay home again.
‘Yellow, amber and even the most severe red warnings are in place for vast swathes of the United Kingdom – from Inverness to the Isle of Wight – for Friday.’
Our local council announced that almost everything would be closed on Friday. Team H deferred their long weekend visit, just like lockdown again, then cancelled as we heard that Eunice was to be followed by Storm Franklin and perhaps Gladys…
Friends and families warned each other ( well me ) not to go out to see the sea. I thought I would pop out to the recycling bin, but the front door nearly blew off. The front and side of our house takes the brunt of the prevailing south westerly and a record wind speed of 122 miles per hour was recorded on the Isle of Wight, as the wind wended its way to our house.
Unless you live in solitary splendour in the countryside you are probably very close or joined to your neighbours. It was our neighbour who alerted us to tiles fallen off our roof, just missing their car. Only two tiles lost and one loose, but up high…
A good while ago it was the neighbours the other side who had major building work done to their house with the scaffolding in our driveway. The builders inadvertently broke one of our tiles, but how lucky was that because they fixed it and had four tiles left over and left them with us. Even luckier, considering I always forget where I put everything, I remembered where the spare tiles were hidden in the potting shed.
My son planned to fix the roof before Eunice took unfair advantage of the weak spot. I didn’t think anyone should be doing anything with ladders. My daughter-in-law was dispatched to Wickes to buy a hook attachment for the ladder and some spongy glue stuff. I didn’t think anyone should be going out.
Luckily we have the ‘right sort of roof’ for the proposed action and with careful checking of wind speeds, yet another thing you can do on the internet and the use of two ladders, the roof was repaired later in the day. We did not have to join the queues of home owners waiting for builders and roofers.
We had of course got off lightly. People had four hundred year old oak trees falling on their house and homes were flooded. Sadly the red warnings were justified as several people were killed by toppling trees.
Times and Tides of a Beachwriter 