Hélène, I grew up in a part of the Netherlands that lies well below sea level (as quite a lot of it does ). I never gave it a second thought until my husband (then fiancé) asked whether it made me nervous at all. It didn't, it still doesn't when I'm back there, because I'm so used to it! Must be the same with living on an island.
By the way, I know that technically Britain is an island, but when you're right in the middle of the country like we are you'd never know it. Having grown up near the sea that is one thing I really miss here!
I can remember as a small brat we lived in Manorbier in the far South West of Wales. Our house was 400m (1/4mile) back from 100m (300ft) high cliffs that faced South West. Next land from us due west was Labrador, an ocean away. When big storms slammed into the coast we could see the glass of the windows flexing and feel the shudder in the ground as waves hit the cliffs. The whole house seemed to stagger and hunker down momentarily under the impact of gusts. Everything had to be tied down before a big storm with caravans, cars & vans being roped down to avoid being rolled over or flung as missiles into houses down wind. It was incredibly exhilarating. When walking in a storm there was always a rain-free calm spot about 20ft (7m) downwind of the cliff that it was amazing to be in, like in a calm summers day with a jet engine roaring and screaming in fury next to you with a giant rocket blasting tons of sea foam straight upwards into the sky only feet away. The foam got 30, 40, 50 ft into the air before starting its roller-coaster ride inland. The streamers of foam showed the rip currents in the air and every twist and loop and acceleration until it was too far away to see. Further back from the cliff I sometimes lent 30 degrees into the wind and was cradled by the howling, tearing force of it - difficult to walk like that, but fun, and in those areas the rain came like bullets stinging any bare skin it found.
After a big storm we usually went out to clear the sea foam off the grass in the garden to stop the salt killing it all, and pickup any property that wasn't ours & give it back to whoever had lost it.
Kent, after that, is a great disappointment for the moderation of its storms, though as a house owner I am relieved that we so rarely get storm damage. We do get a bit more snow than out west, which is nice, and having less water nearby we tend to get a slightly more continental increase in summer temperatures too.
When English people complain about the wet weather, I remind them that that's the price for living in "England's green and pleasant land"
Richard, your former home sounds exhilarating! When I was little, if there was a good wester storm brewing and I wasn't in school, my aunt and mother used to take me to Scheveningen beach for a walk. Though not as exciting as what you describe, you could lean back into the wind at quite astonishing angles without falling over!
Years later, on a visit to The Netherlands with my husband, I dragged him off to Scheveningen beach in what was really quite a modest storm - a stormlet, you might say - but I failed to convince him that this was good weather for a beach walk. His idea of ideal beach weather is blazng sunshine at the end of August when the sea has had a few months to warm up
I was born near the sea. In fact our road ended on the shingle beach.
I miss the sea. We are at at least 4 hrs drive from the nearest coast.
It may sound exotic Lyudmila, but I can no longer cope with the heat in summer.
So a move to Scotland with much cooler ( yes and wetter!) weather sounds so inviting.
We have been here 21 years and it's so much hotter than when we moved here. D/H took some persuading but even he is looking forward to cooler climes.
I was born and lived in and around Chicago for the first half of my life. And I went to college in Wisconsin which is even colder. Blizzards, cars covered in snow for weeks making for way overcrowded public transportation is what my adult self remembers most. I have to admit it is great growing up in a climate like that. Parks flood some of the field for free ice skating, snowmen, snow angels, building snow forts for snowball fights and finishing up with hot chocolate with a marshmallow on top is wonderful. Driving and trying to get to work is a whole other thing when you are forced to grow up.
I moved to Charleston, SC 36 years ago so I've lived the second half of my life here. 15 minutes from the Atlantic (which is wonderful except in hurricane season) and snow is a rare and minimal adventure when it does occur and melts pretty quickly. I tell people that it took me nanoseconds to acclimate to the climate. It can be difficult when the THI is 105 to 110F (40 - 43C) but that doesn't happen often and most homes have AC as do all the stores, theaters etc . It is very difficult for those who can't afford it and often there are shelters to help, but not enough. The growth of the population in the Southern states of the US is linked to the development of Central Air Conditioning. We're not the hottest state by far and I don't know that I would want to move besides the fact that my family is here, mostly.
I think I used up all the tolerance to cold I had when I lived north (worst ever was -26F (-32C) . In fact, just thinking about it gives me the chills. I think I will now go outside and warm up!
Carole
WIPs
Star Wars Afghan:Chewbaca
HAEDs:
O Kitten Tree
Dancing with the Cat
Everything else "on hold"
2022 Finished: Star Wars Afghan: Princess Leia, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Yoda, Finn, Rey, Poe, Han Solo,Darth Vader, BB8,Luke Skywalker
I was also born by the sea and miss it a lot. I used to go to sleep with the high wind "singing" around the house, as our house formed a corner of two streets. The air felt so good. Full of iodine, I was told. I can imagine how Richard's house was like. The sea salt is really bad for the grass and erodes all the metal too.
Mind you, they now have built a nuclear power station nearby and the resident must keep iodin tablets, in case of an " incident"!
That spoils it somehow!
Wendy, my sister and her DH live in Angouleme. They "cabane" most afternoons, meaning they shut the shutters to keep the heat out and they stay indoors.
Hélène
Finished: Joan Elliott. Rainbow Fairy
Fit Kit by Peter Underhill
The Choir by Peter Underhill
Angel Of The Morning by Lavender & Lace Best of Friends by Mabel Lucie Attwell
We did that in the town I lived in in Illinois in the summer. There was a ritual of pulling blinds on the sunny side of the house and opening up on the shady side. My grandparents had big awnings, which were very exciting. I also remember being woken up in the middle of the night to help open particular windows downstairs on opposite sides of the house a crack to equalise the pressure when there was a big storm moving through that might produce a tornado. Did it really help? No idea, but we never lost our roof.
Just made a strawberry cake... hardly made a dent in the accumulation, but every little helps, as they say. There's also wash on the line, more in hope than expectation, of course. Was supposed to be a nice day.
Went out for a walk this afternoon, and had blackberries straight off the brambles. Delicious. Shall be out tomorrow to collect a good few for jam. Still using blackberry jam from 2017. Mustn't run out -the world would end.
In Somerset I used to pick them in the autumn half term, last week in October. Do find it hard to get used to them being ripe in July here in Kent.
There are some wonderful bushes in the local church yard which always yield plenty (and why more people aren't all over them I will never know, but I'm not complaining!) I don't really do jam, but they go well with breakfast cereal and I make a mean crumble
Just learnt that a friend of mine received a vile anonymous letter yesterday (including a jibe that losing her husband - in a car accident - was bad karma, and something that amounted to a death threat), addressed in such a way (Miss A Lastname instead of Mrs A Lastname) that her 9-year-old daughter opened and read it.
I did not know there really were such people in the world.
That is appalling!!
How could anyone be so cruel!
The world certainly has some truly wicked people about.
My heart goes out to your friend and her daughter and I hope that she will receive the help she needs to get through this trauma!
Daughter is fortunately a well-balanced, down-to-earth sort of person, and demonstrated effortlessly how children have different ideas about what is important in a message. In between the bile, threats and cruelty about the dead husband the writer kept calling her "fatso" and the like, and according to my friend, daughter handed the letter to her with an annoyed expression saying "it's not true mummy - you've lost lots of weight!"
I am appalled that someone would send a letter like that to anyone at any time. Including a death threat? I would turn it over to the police. I am glad to hear that the 9 y.o. clearly has more sense than the evil moron who sent the letter. and I'm very glad that your friend has you to give her the support that she needs now.
Carole
WIPs
Star Wars Afghan:Chewbaca
HAEDs:
O Kitten Tree
Dancing with the Cat
Everything else "on hold"
2022 Finished: Star Wars Afghan: Princess Leia, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Yoda, Finn, Rey, Poe, Han Solo,Darth Vader, BB8,Luke Skywalker
Mabel, I'm sorry you had to find this fact out, and in such an appalling manner. It's almost easier if it happens to oneself -- not that it should happen to anyone. I do hope that the recipient has indeed taken it to the police; this is not something to be excused or left to fester. I'm very sorry to say that where there's one, there might be more, so I'm glad your friend has good support. And her daughter's response is reassuring (blessed un-worldliness of the young).
First thing she did was take it to the police, and contact the chairmen of several organisations to which the writer may have links (from internal clues)
It started at 4am with my son yelling "daddy!" with such urgency that I bolted to his room prepared for a major emergency. As it turns out something had fallen between his bed and the wall. Thankfully I convinced him to wait till morning and we'd look for it then. That should have been then end of it and I should have been fast asleep 5 minutes later. But as I was trying to get back to sleep I kept hearing something just outside the window making critter-like noises. My curiosity getting the better of me, I went outside with flashlight(torch) in hand just in time to catch a group of three raccoons moving from splashing in the birdbath to a large tree and what I was hearing was the sound of their claws on the bark of the tree as they climbed. That should have been the end of it and I should have been asleep 5 minutes later, but apparently they had a lot to discuss and sat there in the top of the tree in our back garden chattering back and forth till about 5am.
Ok fine, I lost some sleep and slept in a bit to compensate and now have less time to work on my tasks for the day, but I will manage. First up was cutting some new closet door track to length then replacing the track on the one set of closet doors that I had previously completed. You see, when I replaced the old hollow core closet doors with new solid core doors to match the other new doors in the house they were so heavy that they would barely budge on the track they hang from and it was a chore to get anything from the closet, so I ordered some new track and hardware designed for heavier doors. As it turned out the new hardware hangs down lower than the old hardware so I had to go trim some length off the door. Then it turned out that the builders didn't frame the closet level on the top where the track mounts and the new hardware was so easy to move that as soon as I let go of the door it would roll open. So I shimmed everything level as a fix for now, but that meant the door was too tall again so back outside to cut more length off it again. By now Richard is probably nodding his head understandingly. So finally, at 4pm my "quick morning task" was completed and I had made no progress on my main task for the day.
That's ok, I'll just prepare these boxes for shipment... Oh wait, the contents labeling requirements have changed and now I must relabel 99 items after first purchasing labels and possibly a thermal printer to make them with. That's a problem to figure out tomorrow.
The day wasn't done with me yet. During the afternoon I saw my son playing with the keys for a new tool cabinet that I purchased two weeks ago and I asked him to stop playing with them and put them away. Which he did. But unknown to us this tool cabinet can be locked with a drawer open then the drawer can be shut. We didn't realize where the keys were at first and only after turning the house and garage upside down half an hour did he remember having put them in the cabinet (he is only 6). As it turns out the earlier version of this cabinet was easier to break into if needed, but the manufacturer has addressed those weaknesses with the newer model that I have. There was but one weakness that didn't involve spending money, tip the 290lb(132kg) (empty weight) toolbox and its contents upside down which allows gravity to help defeat a lock on a drawer and then you're in. So now I've got my keys back and a spare key stashed in a secret location and a huge pile of tools that need to be reorganized and put back in their drawers. That's a problem to figure out tomorrow.
That's it, I'm going to bed before I fail to complete something else.
Hmm, days like the make you simply go back to bed and pull the covers up over your head.
I'm working next week, but the week after I'm on leave. Tracy has decided that having a week off at the same time as me is more than she can bear, so will continue working from the conservatory by computer.
So, I'm left with juggling vehicle servicing and annual safety checks on my own - driving to the garage, walking 2 miles home. This for the car, van and one moped. Then I need to mow the garden with its annual mow. On 1 June I ordered a finger bar mower that has powered drive wheels so I don't kill myself pushing the mower up and down the 30ft high bank. On Thursday I got news (and confirmed it with every other supplier I could find) that none are likely to be made this year and I will have to use the strimmer I used last year. So, this weekend I started the mow. 30 minutes later I was running with sweat and staggering with overheating. I had mown maybe 20%. The heat and humidity had reduced me to a wreck. It's highly likely that there will be at least 50% left by the time I'm on leave. So, I suspect the small part of my holiday not involved in moving vehicles will be spent mowing until I drop.
). I never gave it a second thought until my husband (then fiancé) asked whether it made me nervous at all. It didn't, it still doesn't when I'm back there, because I'm so used to it! Must be the same with living on an island.
