The expert bozos and the news-dispensing people are already saying that even if it stops raining we’re going to have excess-of-water troubles, including some increased flooding, for the next few weeks and possibly the next few months, because of saturation and groundwater levels and so on.  And it hasn’t stopped raining.  It rained yesterday.  It rained today.  It’s raining now.

According to the five-day it’s going to rain every day this week.  It’s (maybe) going to rain less on Wednesday . . . but it’s still going to rain.  ‘Sometimes heavy.  Sometimes with thunder.’  Sometimes with three hellcritters linking arms/legs and bracing themselves against whatever is available* and thus preventing the hellgoddess from dragging any of them outdoors for a hurtle.**

It’s been sucky recently for other meteorologically inaugurated reasons.  I didn’t make it to silent prayer Wednesday afternoon because the ME and the weather linked arms/legs and prevented me from dragging myself out the door and going anywhere.***  I cancelled going Street Pastoring on Friday, as I told you at the time. †

Saturday . . . I got to the monks’ a little early because I’d been worrying about water on the roads—one of the intersections not far from them is on the official list of closed roads, and I wouldn’t have said it was the lowest patch of country in the area—and then sailed (so to speak) through with minimal splashing.  I noticed the monks were blacked out (also so to speak) more than usual—the abbey is often really dark when I turn up for Saturday night prayer†† but there’s usually a light shining somewhere.  No light.  As I walked down the path to the chapel the security light failed to come on.  Power cut, I thought, but I kept going.  They’re monks.  Monks have been doing this for almost two thousand years.  They’ve been doing it without electricity for most of that time.  I assumed they’d break out the candles and get on with it.  Maybe some of them would have blankets too, in the circumstances.

The door was locked.  Nooooooo.  Robin bursts into tears.  It’s been a crummy week.

I’ve emailed Alfrick, but I have no idea when, or if, he’ll get it.  I assume what’s happened is that they did have a power cut, but that they have no back-up for things like heat and cooking—they live on a frayed shoestring, so while I might have expected oil lamps, a camping stove and a substantial log pile for the fireplace(s), I’m not at all surprised at the lack of a generator—and most of them are, you know, old.†††  The average temperature of their chapel is challenging enough.  So I further assume they’ve evacuated themselves to somewhere that the central heating still works.‡  Or maybe I should say that has central heating.  I just hope they don’t decide they like it and refuse to come back.

And then last night . . . I was going to go to church.  I have three services I go to pretty faithfully every week, and I’d already missed two of them, due to circumstances beyond my control.  I really had to get to church Sunday night because otherwise I’d’ve had no official public worship all week and would instantly become a heathen.  And it shouldn’t be a problem;  there was nothing too exciting going on with the weather.  I mean, sure, it was raining, but the Pope is Catholic, isn’t he?

I need to leave at about 6:45 so at about 5:30 I stood up—from laptop on kitchen table at the mews—to perform evening hurtles.

And the lights went out.

We hung around, the way you do, waiting for them to come on again.  I shut down and unplugged the laptop.  Eventually Peter went off to have a nap and I took the first critter-shift out.  It was only Peter’s end of town;  I had power at the cottage.  But the cottage is (still) full of stuff from Third House and my steep, narrow twisty stairs are not ideal for someone who had a stroke a few months ago and whose right leg still doesn’t work too well.  Hellhounds and I hurtled back down to the mews, where the lights were still out.  I took the second critter shift for her hurtle.

We returned.  The lights were still out.

I didn’t go to church.  We found a pub that (a) had power and (b) served dinner on a Sunday night.  I dropped Peter off while I schlepped hellcritters, hellcritter dinner, laptop etc back to the cottage.  I was very glad to see the glass of champagne Peter had ordered for me when I finally got back to the pub.  And the food was really good:  add that pub to our list for future reference.  So I may be a heathen but I’m a well-fed heathen.

And Pav is definitely coming off heat.  Yaaaaaaay.

* * *

* This is really easy at the cottage.  Finding one’s way through is the hard one.

** I’m not cleaning any litterboxes.^  You’re going out.  I admit that I’m a little disheartened that Pav the Thunderer, Pav the Riotous, dislikes rain as much as the hellhounds.

^ Cats are small.  Maintaining litterboxes for a hundred and fifteen pounds of critter(s)?  NO THANK YOU.  Aside from where I would put this yacht+.

+ I seem to be preoccupied with watery things.  I wonder why.

*** Also the village next door was under water and the way around is not only longer, it involves the kind of fast ‘A’ road I try to avoid when the ME is whacking me.

† The weather was plenty dire enough for me to be glad to be staying home, but not as dire as it might have been so I was enabled to feel horribly guilty for not going.  But there was enough wind from an unfriendly direction that my eaves at the cottage started doing their banshee imitation, whereupon Darkness shot out of the hellhound crate and cowered trembling by the front door.  Arrrrrrgh.

†† One of the minor pleasures of driving in in the dark is that while they’ve got a big official VISITORS WELCOME sign out by the road, there’s another small sign that just says WELCOME as you trundle down the little drive to the (unlit) car park—it’s like ‘just in case you thought we didn’t really mean it’—but if you’re coming in after dark your headlights pick it up and it’s like a smile from a friend.

††† Alfrick is nearly as old as I am.

‡ Have I mentioned that my central heating at the cottage crapped out about three weeks ago?  Feh.  But while my hateful bank is hanging onto my brought-over-from-America money for Bank Reasons that for some reason the government and judicial system let them get away with I can’t afford to hire someone to mend it.  Fortunately I have an Aga, it’s a small house, and the weather is only really fierce in terms of precipifrellingtation, not temperature.^

^ Although being helped to dress by a hellterror, as I shiver by the Aga, is not ideal.