I have been away from the PC for a day or two because our electricity has been down, followed by a flaky internet connection. On Tuesday night an ENORMOUS storm passed over us, with winds to 140kmh. At least 5cm of rain fell, or rather blasted us horizontally, and it has taken some time to sort things out.
We thought we had it bad – a couple of small trees down and various sundry damage, but several of the fields of crops, tree plantations and hedgerows around us have been more or less destroyed completely.
Happily, the people in the gite took it well – not quite the summery weather they were expecting I think, and enjoyed watching the spider-webs of lightning across the sky as much as the rest of us. More, probably, because it wasn’t their own house creaking and groaning around them, or their vegetable garden washing away.
Perhaps the worst consequence is the plum orchards. There are a lot of these in the area, mostly used for making the renowned ‘pruneaux d’Agen’ – a moist prune that is famous the world over. These orchards take decades to establish, but then one enormous storm and a whole orchard gets uprooted. Not a pretty sight.
Some people we know were camping on the Atlantic coast when the storm hit. They (and the other campers) took refuge somewhere, but almost all the cars had all their windows smashed in by hailstones. We sat nervously under our four ‘Velux’ (glass roof) windows expecting the same, but luckily it didn’t happen.
A lot of the villages near us still have no electricity after two days, and the noise of buzzing chainsaws fills the air as people battle to repair the damage and undo the effects of the flooding and broken trees.
But the atmosphere in France is good, positively happy. Why? Because France have, against all odds, made it to the World Cup final. After a performance in the first couple of games best described as disappointing, they have ‘stormed’ their way through later matches and stand a pretty good chance of winning the tournament. A remarkable achievement.
Who am I cheering for? France, of course. If England had managed to turn in a good performance (yeah, right) and had faced France in the semi-final I would not have cared too much who won, but of course that didn’t happen so I escaped the dilemma.
I’m off to saw up a fallen plum tree. Allez les bleus!
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