Weather, which has conveniently grouped my next consecutive letters together.
Rain, Spotty (?) Showers and Thunder to be exact.
Us Brits are always complaining about the weather, it’s either too hot, too cold, too wet, too dry, too windy, too stuffy. We’re never happy, but it’s always a good opener for conversation.
To be honest, it’s been so hot lately, we need the rain to cool and clear the air.
Neither Hubby or I like the heat, and at night it can be unbearable in the boat despite sleeping on top of the duvet. Having the bow and helm doors open during the day is OK, but being on water, there are a lot of gnats and midges, and we don’t want them indoors, THEY BITE!
In the house, we had fans in the lounge and bedrooms but couldn’t have the windows open at night because of the noise (lorries going by in the early hours and aircraft overhead).
Poor Maggie also doesn’t know where to put herself as being a mostly black dog, she absorbs the heat and on the boat there are few places where it is cool.
Even on the bow it’s hot, so most times she’ll settle in the bathroom, probably because it only has a small window and no other immediate glass to let the sun in.
The ‘spotty showers’ seems to be a new term from the met office, so that probably means rain will drip on a ‘spot’ here and another ‘spot’ there across the country.
We’ve been lucky as we’ve been able to dodge the showers most of the time, but if rain is forecast and we have to go out, we’re armed with our waterproofs in a backpack.
Thunder however is a different matter.
In the past, we have seen some magnificent thunderheads in the sky and watched some spectacular storms. We got caught out in Lincolnshire after a long spell of really hot, muggy weather, and were dancing in the rain when it finally came, bringing with it flash floods and road chaos. It was the day we discovered our soak-aways didn’t and our drive was a few inches under water.
Since we’ve been here, we have only heard the occasional rumblings some distance away apart from one horrendous ‘BANG’ directly overhead.
Maggie gets extremely anxious during thunderstorms, the same as she does with fireworks. We believe it’s because she can’t see where the noise is coming from, and there is no warning to prepare her. However, saying that, she will be restless way before we hear anything as she senses the atmosphere change.
We have been asked to let Tuppy out later as her owners are both working again, but apparently she isn’t bothered by thunder, so we have no need to worry about her if it arrives before they get back.
Some of the other dogs we’ve looked after in the past have become agitated and restless during a storm, and unfortunately, this behaviour can rub off on our dog, the same as hers can rub off on our canine visitors.
Still, we shall see, as looking at the radar picture, the rain is moving away from us.
I wonder if there is such a thing yet as a spotty thunderstorm?
Note:
The rain hit in the afternoon and stayed with us for several hours.
Spotty showers it was not.
The thunder arrived around midnight, so Maggie took refuge in the bathroom, but it was shortlived thank goodness.
pensitivity101 