Sugar Shaker

Sugar Shakers.

The rime last week gave us spectacular views across the Dales. I remember a conversation we had a couple of years ago while negotiating a hair pin bend down from the moor, where he (driving) asked if that was frost on the hedges. I had replied that no, it looked like the kind of mist you got when the morning sun was just burning off the dew , but was that thing that for me most grabs me from inside, May blossom. This time it was reversed. I was driving alone, but the winter hedges spiked, every twig and thorn delineated by the fluffy frost appeared to be exploding in a riot of frothy flowers.

Following the excitement of the rime, there was a total eclipse of the moon to break up the monotony as February slithered towards March. With hope that for once the skies might be free of the cloud and general overcastedness which occurs whenever there is an astronomical phenomenon, which , predicted to occur between 1am and 4am, might actually be at optimum visibility from a position in the sky relative to my bedroom window and at that time in the night least affected by light pollution of the town. No such luck, however, the temperature rose and the sky was thick with low lying cloud, so no red moon to marvel about.

The next bit of excitement was the earthquake last Wednesday morning. Well, more of a shiver or a tremor really. It really should have done it again the next night at 1am, so that everyone who missed it would have a story to tell, and those who didn’t might actually know what it was and observe accordingly. Me, I would have normally been still awake at 1 o’clock in the morning, but for the first time in ages I had actually fallen asleep over a critical essay regarding Omens in Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina.

I was woken by what I thought was the dog scratting and rattling his ID and microchip discs. The fact that the dog was snoring and sleep whimpering, paws twitching and scuffling the laminate floor at the side of the bed somehow did not compute, but what else could it be. Bangs ,crashes and the bed doing an impression of a tall ship on a rough sea and assumed I was dreaming and must need a pee. With a rumbling like a lorry which was not hitting the raised manhole cover in the street outside, I realised it was an earthquake, mainly because my father had been around a few of them in his time and told me all about the symptoms. Not that I took much notice at the time, assuming that it was all a euphemism or excuse for him being drunk as the proverbial skunk.

So 10 seconds or so later, it was like interesting but blink-and-miss-it sex, all over in three shakes.

I can’t believe really I just went back to sleep. Me the insomniac nearly slept through an earthquake and did not even bother to turn on the TV for 24hr news to see if the rest of the country apart from my house had been swallowed up by a huge fissure in the earth and global warming seen to the rest by covering up the mess with North Sea and/or Atlantic Ocean.

Next morning all seemed to be intact except for a few teddy bears having leapt from their customary perches, and a couple of model plane crashes from his study shelves- oh and the model cars on the sitting room windowsill had started on a run to London but stalled when they had hit the mullion. I realised that the rattling had been the collection of Aladdin oil lamps I have for Living History presentations and displays shoved on any spare bit of flat surface. All intact except one broken glass chimney.

Friday evening saw the most frightening wind and rain storms I have witnessed from here in my urban nest. Somehow, outside in the open countryside, such violence is not so threatening. Actually, not just witnessed from my nest, witnessed in it. It is the irony of my life that if I bodge a job up, it lasts for at least 20 years. If I pay good money out for professionals to do it I always end up having to do it again. Last week I had a whole new roof put on the ground floor bay because it had been leaking over the front door. Well, Friday evening, the rain was being blown against the front of the building so hard, in such quantities that looking from outside it was like Hardraw Force , and from the first floor sitting room, and the second floor bedroom it was like someone had turned a powerhose full blast on the windows. The noise, even through the double glazing was such that it put that tightness of dread in my stomach. I would not have been surprised if the whole front elevation of this solid stone Victorian building had not collapsed.

Downstairs in the shop, the water was pouring into the bay, through the new roof. Running with pans and buckets and plastic sheets, but it was hopeless. All I could do was try to move everything that was vulnerable to water. Bugger. The roofers came immediately I called them on Saturday morning, and despite the wind blowing their ladders down (fortunately without either of them on it and no one passing underneath ) spent the day redoing the mortar that they reckoned had cracked with the frost. Think I am that daft? They forgot to finish that bit, the edge where the bay meets the wall, didn’t they.

The wind has dropped a bit now, but it is getting colder. There is a another severe weather warning, this time for snow.

March 2008 looks like it is going to come in like a big white lion shaking its mane.