Wednesday 28th August - Conversation between Mickey Mouse and the Technocrats

Occasionally my son posts something on his blog that is too techy for me. Well, here's a technical post for him.

It should be simple - seems very simple to me.

The Technocrats have lots of photographs on their super-dupes cameras which they, and I would like to post into my blogspot blog.

However, I am a simple soul, and have developed a very simple system which I can understand - I take the picture on my mobile phone, upload it to picasa, and then get it into the blog. Bob's your uncle and Charlie's your Aunt. So seeemple even a meerkat can do it.

The Technocrats are in consultation together on how to get their photographs into the blog; I understand the first step, which is I need to go through and choose which photos I want and copy and paste them into a folder. I can get my head round this thus far.

They are working on the least offensive (to their purist minds) method of proceeding.

They have totally and uncompromisingly rejected my solution;

Display the photograph I want on the screen of the laptop, take a photograph of the photograph with my mobile phone and upload that to picasa!

NOOO! they chorus as one.

I might try it anyway when they are not looking.


Oho oho

It CAN be done. But it ain't great.

And I got caught in the act. There is one very irritated technocrat on one side of me, and another one laughing on the other side of me. Perhaps they have a point!

Saturday 24th August - Transition - Moving on, moving out, sort of

One of our children moved into his own flat a number of years ago - actually, he is on his second rented flat and contemplating something more permanent.

The other child will be moving out soon, (fingers and toes crossed that everything goes according to plan).

Of course, these children are children no more - I'm not even sure that they are in the category of "young people". They are real, proper "grown-ups" these days. (So what does that make us - be Very Careful how you answer that one.)

The thing is, that when they move, they take what they want with them. The pans and plates bought for university, their bedding, their "tech"; all that gets packed up and relocated. Everything else is  just, well, resting, dozing, relaxing, chilling out, lazing around, in the drawers, on the shelves, in the cupboards.

well, that's another story.

So, our son's room is pretty much as he left it, four years ago, with the addition of the daughter's university clearance boxes, and various odds and ends of ours, and a clothes drying rack for drying laundry in bad weather, and extra sheets and bedding that won't fit into the airing cupboard (why won't it fit? It always used to, and we could even shut the door on it too.)

Our plans to turn it into an Office, or a Real Spare Bedroom (I've never had one of those in any house that I've owned - only seen them in television programmes or in show homes) have never happened. Sometimes I force my way past the damp clothes into the small space of clear carpet, size up the task, and back away (literally - no room to turn round in there).





When the daughter moves out, we have plans to make her room into a Real Spare Room. We intend to move into it ourselves, so that we can replace the remnants of the dying carpet in our room with a wooden floor, and decorate properly - heheheh, watch out, you horrible brown dahlias on the walls, after thirty years your days are finally numbered - and have a Real Master Bedroom of our very own.

I have a feeling things may not be quite so clear cut. I suspect that daughter is planning to take what she wants to her flat, and we will be left with her "semi-precious" ornaments, clothes, books, treasures, accoutrements, equipages, school and university study notes and textbooks, stacks of old magazines, models, and all the rest... is just, well, resting in the drawers, on the shelves, in the cupboards.







It would be too, too cruel to pack up their "stuff" into crates and boxes and just dump it on them in their small flats.

 I suppose the answer is to pack it up and put it into the loft.



STOP RIGHT THERE.

Have you tried to get into our loft recently?

Quite so.

That is NOT going to be the solution.

Meanwhile, may I recommend you read this? (You know who you are..... and I am including myself!)



http://www.becomingminimalist.com/creative-ways-to-declutter/

Monday 19th August - What was that!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift

I was walking across the Carfax, which is the central - not a square exactly, because it is round - space, say, in town, when I suddenly became aware of a cheeping sound overhead.

There were about a dozen swifts (I had to google swallows, swifts and house martins to make up my mind) buzzing around in the bright sunshine, hoovering up the insects at a great rate.

I think I was only one of all the people milling to and fro who noticed them.

So I paused and watched them for a while, swivelling my head to follow their acrobatic manoeuvres between the rooftops and the trees, until I had to stop because the sun was making my eyes water.

I didn't bother trying to take a picture with my phone. They were too small, too fast, too unpredictable in their flight patterns.

Sunday 18th August - Standing up, and sitting down

This is an update about my mother. Just saying, so you can skip this post if you like.

I watched my mother's physiotherapy session last week. I'd post pictures of it, except that I like to respect their privacy.



this is the type of hoist used to raise
someone from sitting to standing.
It is currently in the "standing" position

During the session, I watched as she managed to control her back and legs while the hoist assisted her into a standing position, without the aid of the belt around her back which usually does the lifting work for her. Once she had got her balance, she was able to let go of the handle and stand without any support other than the pads which brace her lower legs and knees. This is a major advance.


After practising standing (who would have thought that the simple act of standing and balancing is such hard work, and needs so much concentration!) she was able to control her body as she lowered herself back to sitting on the edge of the bed.



She's also been given an indoor electric wheelchair. This has taken a while to get the hang of. To begin with, my mother was inclined to misjudge the left-hand-edge of every door or piece of furniture that was in her path. If it had been just left to the normal process of bringing the chair, giving her an hour of instruction and then testing to see if she was safe, they would never have been given the chair. However, circumstances were in favour of managing to be allowed to have the chair for two week's practise (the wheelchair technician was going on holiday, and was persuaded to leave the chair with them for the duration!) and so in the end my mother passed with flying colours.

This means that she now suddenly appears behind us when we are standing around. The wheelchair is almost noiseless on the thick carpet, so the only warning of her arrival is the faint click of the little lever that you use to drive the contraption. 



The final bit of news is that her bed (and all the associated paraphernalia) has been moved out of the dining-room end of the living room back into her own bedroom. When she first came home, she used to spend more time in bed than in the wheelchair, as she was really not strong enough to sit for more than a couple of hours at a time. So it made much more sense to put her bed in the living area, so that she was always included in daily goings on. Now, she still has an afternoon nap from time to time, but not every day. Reclaiming the dining room, and having a proper dining table again is another real milestone.

This is all immensely encouraging; after nine-and a half months progress is still happening, and we know that people continue to improve their rehab for several years after the date of the stroke.

Sunday 18th August - Time, and The Phantom Tolbooth

"you see," [said the watchdog] "once there was no time at all, and people found it very inconvenient. They never knew whether they were eating lunch or dinner, and they were always missing trains. So time was invented to help them keep track of the day and get to places when they should. When they began to count all the time that was available, what with 60 seconds in a minute and 60 minutes in an hour and 24 hours in a day and 365 days in a year, it seemed as if there was much more than could ever be used. 'If there's so much of it, it couldn't be very valuable,' was the general opinion, and it soon fell into disrepute.. People wasted it and even gave it away. Then we were given the job of seeing that no one wasted time again," he said, sitting up proudly. "It's work but a noble calling. For you see" - and now he was sitting up, shouting with his arms outstretched - "it is out most valuable possession, more precious than diamonds. It marches on, it and tide wait for no man, and - "

The Annotated version - now that's one for the wish list!
Milo meets the watchdog and tells him he's "just killing time".
He's lucky that the watchdog didn't chase him down the road!

I've known about "The Phantom Tolbooth" by Norton Juster "forever", but I never read it until recently, because I didn't like the cover picture, or the illustrations. Then, last year, I sent a postcard to my Aunt with the cover illustration on it (at random - it was the next one in the box of Puffin Book postcards that I had at the time) and she replied saying that it had been a favourite of my grandmother's. Which I hadn't known.

I downloaded it to my Kindle and started reading. That was last Summer, and I got most of the way through until for some reason I got distracted and so didn't finish it. So, today, I've started from the beginning again. Risky, though, because it is SO full of dazzling wordplay that I'm now going to be quoting from it forever.

How about this from a couple of pages earlier: Milo wasn't paying attention and thinking about where he was going, and took a wrong turning. The road began winding up hill, and everything became greyer and greyer, and his little car went slower and slower until it just stopped.

"I wonder where I am," said Milo in a very worried tone.
"You're...in...the...Dol...drums," wailed a voice that sounded far away.

The voice turns out to belong to a Lethergarian, who recites their daily schedule of procrastination, lingering, loitering, napping, dilly-dallying. Milo is saved from joining them by the sudden arrival of the watchdog.

"What are you doing here?" growled the watchdog.
"Just killing time," replied Milo apologetically.

This reply infuriates the watchdog. It turns out that the only way to escape the Doldrums is to start thinking.

Milo began to think as hard as he could. He thought of birds that swim and fish that fly. He thought of yesterday's lunch and tomorrow's dinner... and as he thought, the wheels of his car began to turn.

I'm going to have to stop typing out this book sooner rather than later! I reading this book is a bit like reading poetry; it throws up lots of avenues to explore along the way and I have to keep stopping and finding time and space to think about what I have just read and pursue the ideas to the end.

I've several books on the go at the moment which are like this: "Cultural Amnesia" by Clive James,
"Christ Plays In Ten Thousand Places" by Eugene Petersen and now this one. Somehow, they don't fit the category of "reading as a leisure activity"! It's all such brain-bending stuff.

Thursday 8th August - Looking for Inspiration

This has been my "holiday" week. I made a new "To-Do" list, which had things like

"Practising the piano"
"Playing the piano"
"Drawing"

on it.

(There are a few necessary other items - letters to write; shopping to do of both the necessary and the "fun" kind; and the basic household tasks which  don't like doing but like it when they are done).

One of the "holiday" categories was "Writing Prompts". Last year, in an effort to improve my writing skills, I bought a book called "The Writer's Year" by Judith Reeves.

 I saw it in a bookshop somewhere, Foyles, I think, so it must have been on my way home from a hospital trip, and thought I'd give it a go. It is a pleasant, engaging, chatty mix of encouraging articles and also a daily writing prompt. Last year I tackled most of "August", so this year I've started on "May" - another 31-day month, chosen at random.

I've reached day 6 (OK, OK, I'm catching up) "Write about an opening blossom".

Inspiration deserted me.

So I decided to make a cup of tea, but not just any old tea.

This is one of the last remaining sachets of a box of floral teas. I took it out and dropped it into my specially bought thermal cup; It looks unpleasantly like a large rabbit dropping. Or a dropping from a large rabbit.

 

 

I added boiling water. Things started happening almost at once. It floated to the top...

and then sank, twitching and turning and putting out tentacles and revealing a glowing red centre. I watched from a safe distance to see what would happen next.

Yellow particles erupted from the brilliant core, and milled about in a confused manner. It was certainly behaving like some coming back to life from death. I kept my distance, just in case.

The yellow bits sank, which was just as well as I wasn't sure how I was going to drink them without risking choking and spluttering.

It took quite a while to cool down enough to start drinking. By then everything had stopped moving about and it was behaving more like tea and less like some tropical sea-creature. In then end I removed the foliage so that I could drink the liquid more easily. I also needed to add more water as it was so strong I couldn't properly taste it.

I did drink it. What did it taste of? Difficult to say. It tasted of oddness and weirdness. Bitter and dusty, strangely dry, not particularly floral. It made my tongue feel all crinkly.

I think I could sum up the experience as more a visual pleasure that a gastronomic one.

So, beware. If you are offered a "Summer Love" floral tea, my suggestion is choose another one.
I've two left in the packet. It may be a wee whiley before I stray from "English Breakfast" again.  

However I did manage to write a whole page. So maybe it had some inspirational qualities?
 

Wednesday 7th August - Really Dire Poetry

There was an old man of Tralee
Who was stung on the knee by a wasp,
When they asked "did it hurt?"
He replied "not a bit,
"But I'm so glad it wasn't a hornet!"

There was an old man of Japan,
Whose limericks would never exactly scan.
There was also the line
That didn't quite rhyme,
So you'd best forget it as soon as you can.

I'm fiddling around with a bit of "Creative Writing" following a book by Judy Reeves called "A Writer's Book of Days". It is full of snippets and encouragements about writing, and also gives a "writing prompt" for every day of the year. I only manage to get around to doing this in any regular fashion in August, and as I did the August prompts last year, I'm following May this year.

I'm already behind; today I have reached May 5th and the prompt is "The moon made me do it"

Here goes:

"Hunting for Rhymes"

The moon made me do it,
Made me make a rhyme with "spoon",
And also think of June,
Dark nights, lined with silver.

The sun made me do it,
Made me make a dreadful pun,
A vision of my son
Sitting with an orange.

The star made me do it,
Made me think of space, so far,
The distant skies, black as tar,
Pinpoints, shining like new iron.


I think I really should stop here.
These rhymes are grating on my ear.


Being original
Isn't a realistical
Option
Today.
stop

Recipes for Father and Son - Slow Roast Lamb

I made this on Saturday, and gave the recipe to my father earlier this week. When I went round to their house yesterday he was carefully and methodically following the instructions to make it for their supper. I hope is was successful - it was certainly smelling promising as I left around 5pm.

It's a mix of several Jamie Oliver slow roast lamb recipes.

So, for a small household, (ie 2-4 portions),  you need a half-shoulder or half leg of lamb, some red wine (or stock), a tin of chopped tomatoes, some shallots (or an onion), salt, pepper, olive oil, and herbs. I use fresh rosemary and a fresh bay leaf because that's what I have in the garden.

also a roasting dish and foil.

When I made this, we were seven for lunch, so I used three half shoulders and just increased quantities. We had loads on the day (with new potatoes and carrots) and enough for a meal for four leftover. I just heated up the meat with a little extra liquid (water and some cooking sherry) and served it with more new potatoes and peas. I put it in the oven at about nine am and we had lunch at about half past one.

You need to get to work at least four hours before you plan to eat, as this takes three-and-a-half to four-and-a-half hours to cook. I reckon you should allow about 15 minutes preparation time.

Set the oven to 200C

Pour a tablespoon or so of oil into the roasting dish and put the lamb in. Turn it over and over to coat it with the oil. Peel a couple of shallots per person, or peel an onion and quarter it, and drop it in with the lamb. Throw in about three peeled cloves of garlic, and the herbs.

Pour in about half the bottle of wine, or the equivalent amount of chicken or lamb or vegetable stock (made with a stock cube or whatever you've got). I've also made this with dry cider, and with white wine instead of red. Tip in a tin of tomatoes. Small is fine,  use large because I don't buy small. Just make sure the roasting tin isn't brimming because then the liquid will try and climb out and drip onto the base of the oven.

Add some salt - how much? I don't properly know - maybe a couple of pinches, or a small half teaspoon? and a grind or so of black pepper.

Cover with foil, crimping the edges tightly round the edge of the roasting tin to seal it.

Put in oven AND TURN TEMPERATURE DOWN TO 170C

Leave it alone for a generous 3-4 hours. Half an hour before you plan to eat, start cooking your potatoes and veg.

To serve, remove foil (without burning yourself on the steam) and the meat should just fall off the bone in shreds. Spoon some of the juices and the shallots and garlic over it instead of gravy.

NOTE: you can add veg at the beginning along with the shallots; chunks of carrot, leeks, courgette, aubergine, can all go in and cook alongside the lamb.

   

Tuesday 6th August - Music on my Kindle

Music

I've been meaning to work out how to have MY choice of background music when reading my Kindle.

Of course, the easiest option is to plug my ears into my mp3 player. Of course.

However I have discovered that if you connect the kindle to the pc using the usb lead, you can easily load mp3 files into its directory "music". Then you can play/pause them using "alt + space" on your keyboard (I said I had an old-fashioned steam-driven kindle!). I've no idea what you do if you don't have a keyboard but it must be something similar.



Hurray! - ish...

The Kindle will play the mp3 files in the order that they are loaded, and you have no way of choosing which one you would LIKE to listen to. Your only control apart from play/pause is "alt + f" which lets you skip a track.

I have loaded several albums into the Kindle and it happily chunters through them all in sequence; the fact that the tracks are in folders seems to present no obstacle.

It's not perfect, but anything is better than listening to someone else's headphones going "ch chch ch ch", or an irritating conversation about what "he said to her and she said back and then he said but she answered and so he's not talking to her" (and by now I wish they'd all stop talking to each other NOW).

Tuesday 6th August - A selection of Emergency Rainbows

 

The other day I posted on rain falling outside the back door, but not outside the front door.

Yesterday, rain fell off and on all day outside both days, but that's not the point of this post. Neither am I going to wax lyrical or sarcastical about the way I sat dithering about the washing in a great tub waiting to be hung up to dry - inside over the bath, or outside in the sun/rain/sun/rain? (I left it in the tub all day and hung it up inside when I went to bed.)

No; today I'm just posting about rainbows as two readers responded to the August Fool post with emergency rainbows!

This came from a friend:

"A number of years ago it was popular to buy plastic credit-card-sized greetings and sayings. I found this one and bought several – giving them away to people who needed some uplifting. I kept this one tucked into the corner of my dressing table mirror and it is now the only one I have left. It has gotten very faded over the years... Anyway, imagine the trees are green, the mountain is greyish-purple, and the rainbow at the top has it proper colours. It’s the message that’s most important."

It's a rubbish copy of her picture - I can copy and paste it into the post fine, but then it doesn't display on anyone's computer except mine - why is that, I wonder? So I have used my phone to photograph the picture on the computer screen. Where there's a Will there's a Way!

The other rainbow is a link to a photograph. It's a real beauty: http://thomasmccorkell.me.uk/gallery/sky/464


Finally, here's one I took two years ago on a NEVER-TO-BE-FORGOTTEN trip to Canada - never-to-be-forgotten for so many, many reasons:

This is at Niagara Falls - one of the most awe-inspiring places I have ever, ever, ever been to in my whole life. The shadowy outline at the base of the falls is the boat, "Maid of the Mist" which takes you up-close-and-personal into the tremendous dark, thundery waterworld of the falls.

Friday 2nd August - Utterly Fed up with To-Doing

Doing doing doing (rhyme it with  boing boing boing and then it sounds FUN!)

So, the week of working is at an end - nearly at an end - ending?

Another five items gone today - one was a real biggy, sorting out the horrible heap of stuff beside the piano - badly stowed music teaching books - badly stowed spare folders and paper - badly stowed baskets of random assorted clutter.

In the end there were 37 items, and three were abandoned as not possible (I've lost the postcard I was saving to send to a friend, I couldn't work out how to arrange the braid and decorative buttons that I planned to sew onto a plain white T-shirt, I texted another friend instead of writing).

Four more haven't been done. One I have delegated, one will HAVE to be done before tomorrow lunchtime, as we are having friends over and it involves clearing the dining room table, and the others will go over to next week.

This is an old picture. It's not as bad as this. I reckon an hour should see it done.
We shall probably cheat by dumping a lot of stuff upstairs in the bedroom.

I have also made two cakes - not on the list - but needed for tomorrow's lunch. Pudding will be strawberry sponge (made with strawberry yoghurt) or chocolate sponge (made with plain yoghurt and brown sugar) served with Green and Blacks vanilla ice cream.

I planned to have a picture of the cakes here, even though I seem to have included my feet in the shot, but it is taking too long to upload and I've got bored waiting. Besides, I need to cook the carrots and potatoes for supper now. 

Oh well, if you are asking, we will start with gazpacho, (if my little hand blender can cope), followed by very slow roast lamb cooked with wine and garlic and vegetables, accompanied by new potatoes, and there will be cheese and biscuits.

I have impressed myself  this week, even at the cost of boring you.

Thursday 1st August - Discovering Poetry

I've just finished a chapter on poetry in Cultural Amnesia. It's very hard to avoid typing out the whole chapter again here.

Some of it was about memorising poetry, which links into my thoughts on memorising music - I've highlighted them for future consideration, and maybe creating a post over on www.themusicjungle.co.uk

Some of it is on reading prose and poetry in the original language, which I've already posted about. He covers this topic elsewhere in the book.

Some of it is about poetry itself; rhythm and metre and rhyme.

As a result of reading this chapter, I spent a lot of time today (on the train, on the underground, in waiting rooms, in cafes) reading poems, courtesy of the internet: www.poetryfoundation.org/  and also www.poetry.com and also on my Kindle, where I loaded Palgrave's Golden Treasury for free a couple of weeks ago.

On the tube, I read this, one of the series of "Poems on the Underground", which just happened to be opposite me, (above the head of the young man I'd had a word with about abandoning his take-away bag on the platform - "yeah, it's naughty of me, I know" he said. I gave him the look I usually reserve for a certain child in year 3 at a certain school)

The Conversation of Old Men  

Thom Gunn

He feels a breeze rise from
the Thames, as far off
as Rotherhithe, in
intimate contact with
water, slimy hulls,
dark wood greenish
at waterline - touching
then leaving what it
lightly touches; he
goes on talking, and this is
the life of wind on water.

Then, following a lead from Clive James, I read Shelley - "Ode to the West Wind" http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15693
did you know that the last line of that is "If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?" I didn't, although I have come across that quotation. It's a brilliant poem! Shines like precious metal, sings like a symphony. Such amazing structure, rhythm, such a demanding rhyming structure...

Then, following another side alley of Clive James'  I read Philip Larkin's "The Whitsun Weddings"
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/learning/guide/180154#poem and that's another "wow" again. I love the changes in pace, the observation, the thought behind the words. I could see the whole thing in my head like a picture, or a film, unreeling in front of me.

These three poems are as different as Schumann to Delius to Philip Glass. I have entered a new world.

Thursday 1st August - The To-Do-List-continued

Yesterday, before setting off to spend the day with a great family friend, now in her 80s, and living about an hour and a half away, I managed to dispose of another 5 tasks on the list.

To encourage myself, as well as ticking them off, I've been high-lighting them; a different colour for each day.

I came back with three more tasks to add.

Today, I've only got rid of one task - getting my "Fit to Fly" certificate completed by the consultant while I was at a routine cardiology/rheumatology appointment in London. (all's well - my condition is still stable, come back in six months as usual - phew)

And I've added another couple of tasks.

I've still got tomorrow morning and Saturday morning to chip away at the list, and some tasks are going to have top go over - they can't be done in that time frame.

A lot of the original tasks have been outstanding for months and months and months and those are the ones that I have mostly managed to shift this week.

BUT

I am BOUND and DETERMINED to keep next week as clear as possible of external demands so that I can satisfy some of my internal needs - to read, to draw, to play music, to do some of the work I need to do for next term, to make an impression on the garden, to sew, to write...

My To-Do list for next week will be just as crammed as this week, but hopefully in a different way.

Thursday 1st August - Reading, and Crashing my Kindle

   

 

When I get the opportunity, (which is not as often as I would like), I'm reading "Cultural Amnesia" by Clive James at the moment. It is an astonishing book. Each chapter has a different person as a starting point, and then you are finding yourself wandering down all kinds of paths to new places and sudden viewpoints. I have shown both editions of the book: the earlier one (on the right) is subtitled "Necessary Memories from History and the Arts". The later edition has "Notes in the Margin of My Time" on the cover.

What do I mean - "when I get the opportunity"? It's the kind of book that you need proper brain-space to read. It's no good at all treating it like a penny-dreadful, or even a pound-quite-good-page-turner. It is a Proper Read, not to be squandered on a half-attentive mind. So that puts it out of reach most days and most nights.

I'd always thought that Clive James was a clever man but this book is dizzying. I am being so EduCated that I'm thinking of changing my name to Rita.

I read it on my Kindle, which makes it very easy to highlight passages for future follow-up. Too easy; last week, my Kindle starting crashing and suddenly shutting down because of the size of the "My Clippings" file which stores all the references.

What do I find to highlight? Well, I now have a long reading list of poems and novels to read, and a kind of feeling that it would be better if, like him, I could read them in the original Spanish, or Italian, or French or German. He recommends having parallel texts in English and the native language. I haven't done that  kind of thing since reading Chaucer for O-levels.

That will mean buying lots of books, of course, unless I get another Kindle...

So I have two routes for future café/train journey/hospital reading interludes:

The techy solution will require 2 Kindles and my phone. Kindles for parallel texts, phone for writing notes (mines a Samsung thingy with a pen-thingy and "Docs-to-go" Works well enough - I typed most of this blog entry on it, and emailed it to myself for finishing off later. However all these devices will continually slope off into hibernation mode given half a chance, unless you keep joggling them.

The steam-power solution requires two books, two dictionaries (one in English, one in the foreign language) notebook and pen. They will all be better at staying awake, but now I'm talking about kilos of stuff to lug around with me. hmm again.

Thought needed.

Oh, and by the way, here's a solution to an over-filled "My Clippings" file on your Kindle.

Go to  https://kindle.amazon.com/your_highlights (that's an underscore between "your" and "highlights"). You will need to log on to your amazon account, and then you can get at "My Clippings", and select what you want to keep. I copied and pasted it all into a Word document to sort through and organise later. The blog post that I discovered this info from suggests you can use your "Evernote web-clipper" to save your file - but I don't know what that is. So Word it is for me. 
 

 

Thursday 1st August - Not an August Fool

It started to rain a few minutes ago, at 6pm.

Huge, great heavy drops of rain, as large as decent size snowflakes, splatting on the patio outside the back door.

As the sun was still shining brightly, I nipped out of the front door to look for the rainbow. For various reasons, I REALLY need to see a rainbow. Now.

No rainbow.

No rain either.

Still plenty coming down outside the back door though.

Is that weird or what?