Austen, Boelo: double whammy

Storm season starts 1st September  [you have to start somewhere] but the first named storm "Austen" slugged in from the Atlantic last Th/Fr night NullSchoolWind windspeed snapshot 20:00 22Oct26 [L]. At Caislean Blob, it has been standard policy at least this year, maybe a bit longer, to heed MetÉireann's weather warnings and park the car in the next county, if the deluge is scheduled for overnight. I've been banned [you're too decrepit for that nonsense you blitherin' old ninny] from nipping out of the house at 02:00 with a head torch and mattock "I'm awa' off to see to the drains". 

I did clean the drains of this year's brambles, but in advance, in daylight, indeed in the sunshine. It's part of adulting in the country that y'have to do this every year. It's a chore. But a single bramble is like steel wire, and can snag a water-impelled twig; which may catch another twig with leaves; which holds back a trundling rock long enough that a clot of dead sycamore leaves forms a dam . . . and rushing water blurfs out onto the gravel of the lane and two hours later the lane has been delivered as heap onto the county road. I also beefed up the berms which run diagonally across the lane surface: slowing down any running water and delivering it into the drain .

If the lane gets washed away as it did in July 1997 and Jan 2010 at least we'll have a vehicle on the outside for shopping or hunting around for a JCB and 40 tonnes of 804 gravel. Parking in the next county? That is formally correct but rhetorically over-dramatic. My neighbour farms the other side of the river (which marks the county borrrder) and I park in a corner of his yard. Sometimes scones are exchanged. Tea-time Thursday I drove down our lane [300m], along the county road [500m], up his lane [300m] and tucked the car in  against a [solid] wall. But I walked home parallel to the county road by completing the rectangle crossing his fields, the river and our fields. It's much shorter and much more hello trees hello sky than dodging 18-wheelers and shit-spattered tractors on the road.

Storm Austen duly came and duly went, and there was no more rainfall that any other front. The following morning, as soon as it was light to see by [and I'd consumed a quart of hot tea] I went to retrieve the car. I wore m'wellies because stream crossing. 16 hrs previously the stream was 15cm deep and 75cm across now it was grey with crud, 2m wide and of indeterminate depth. But there was a stable looking rock awash in the middle of the current and I boldly used that as a hopping stone to reach the far side. I did not fall on my arse and fill m'boots as I did at the same place in 2023. Win! Friday turned out fine: lots of sun to clock up some solar-kWh; some of which baked 800g of brown soda bread. And the Polish Stove-guy [artisans of '26 prev] came back for coffee to refix the seal round the door of our new wood-burning stove. 

Storm Austen grazed the South coast of Ireland. Storm Boelo, 36 hours later, debladdered itself mainly on the North and West coasts but the whole country got stormy rain all day. A day for huddling next to the toasty stove . . . !?! . . . the stove was out of action Saturday because the sealant needed 24 hours to set. Fall-back plan: huddling under a weighty-blanket with a hot-water bottle. With occasional forays outside to count sheep and look sternly at the drains.  Amazing skyscape on Sat/Sun night: not quite full moonlit mackerel skies with stars, planets in the holes. And Sunday morning started gusty but sunny & all sheep reported in with the requisite number of legs. Come on Storm Chloe we're ready.