The rains have come. Oh boy have the rains come. We’ve had more than
20cm in 24 hours – that’s nearly enough to fill up a whole litre bottle of coke
or dangerously approach the top of your wellies (especially if you are only 3ft
high). It’s also apparently enough to completely overface our shiny (not to
mention hideously expensive) new drains. Hard to know whether they are actually
not working or whether a week of solid heavy rain would be too much for even
the Gucci of drains. Long story short, we woke up this morning to find that we
had a new lake on our ‘estate’. Not, alas, a calm pool of azure blue
tranquility from which you could imagine (if you were so inclined) a drenched,
white-shirted Mr Darcy emerging. More a swirling, brown bower of mud and sheep shit
rising at an alarming rate beneath our stand of alder in the front field. You
should have seen the delight on our daughter’s face when her eyes (after having
seen perhaps just one or two episodes of Peppa Pig, ahem) alighted on the
mother of all muddy puddles. Uncontrolled delirious splashing and jumping
ensued for a good half an hour while her parents gloomily slopped about the
field peering depressingly into overflowing drains and ditches and cussing the
Welsh winter weather.
To cheer ourselves up, I’ve been constructing a maternity leave ‘bucket
list’ – i.e. a list of all the places I would like to go and things I would
like to do before I have to face the inevitable and go back to work. Endless
rainy afternoons have proved to be the perfect opportunity to start cracking
through the list, which mainly consists of various tea rooms and vintage
furniture and/or outdoor clothing shops. Oh ok then, and the odd pub if we’re
being completely honest here. Anything rather than being holed up inside with
two increasingly tetchy children accustomed to being outside the whole time
with too much energy and not enough concentration for anything other than
antagonising each other. Plus the fact with the veg patch in its lowest gear
and the all of the big digging jobs requiring dry weather, it means we can
leave the place with less guilt about not making progress than usual. So this
week we’ve discovered a random self-styled ‘chocolate house’ in the middle of
absolutely nowhere which serves a startling array of hot chocolate flavours
(chilli, ginger, banana, amaretti = DIVINE) and homemade chocolates to die for.
We’ve happened across tea rooms selling Florentines and Welsh cakes alongside
battered enamel kitchenware and antique sleigh beds. We’ve bought enough socks
to see us through to the next millennium and our knowledge of the whereabouts
of the local hostelries within a ten mile radius of the house is rapidly
increasing. All absolutely critical, you understand, if we ever actually
realise our dream of hosting paying guests at our place. As you can tell I’m
100% committed to this market research mission, although if our cake
consumption continues at the present rate I’m going to be rivaling the vital
statistics of our ever expanding Berkshire pig, Peppa, who is now actually as
round as she is long. Wow. Bodes well for Christmas. As do the turkeys who have
bizarrely taken to sleeping on top of their hut, despite the gale force winds
and horizontal rain we’ve had for the past week. They weigh so much already
that they have actually dented the corrugated tin on their roof! And there was
me thinking about ordering them some protein shakes from bodybuilding.com to
bulk the little buggers up a little so we have enough to eat on the Big Day.
Mind you, I might have to order them some webbed feet wellies from Amazon at
this rate to contend with the rivers of mud flowing through their enclosure. It
makes me chuckle to think that on my recent visit to a health spa (see bucket
list above) receiving a Rassul Mud Treatment was considered to be the absolute
height of luxury and relaxation. Ah the irony that on my one and only four
hours away from the place and my mucky children since I arrived over nine
months ago, I spend it covered in bloody mud! Now all I need to do is find a
way to channel all the mud that the rain has generated around the place into a
health spa product and I can make my millions and retire to an island in the
Caribbean, far away from all this rain and wind and mud. Then again,
there’s a big part of me that loves the exhilaration and challenge of the wild
weather. Maybe I’ll stick it out for just a bit longer…
Postscript: in case you were worried about the return on investment from
our drains, you will be pleased to learn that not 24 hours later all of the
water had miraculously disappeared much to our great surprise and relief. Just
in time for the next relentless band of wind and rain, the remnants of yet
another randomly named hurricane. Oh well, I suppose it's one way to teach
your kids the alphabet!
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