wendy house

The rain it never stops and I’ve no particular place to go…   …for me this song captures profound sadness so beautifully. 

Japan sang Ghosts

On a cold rainy August UK day my high school friends and I warmed our hands on hot Mocha’s outdoors in convent garden under the shelter of a large unmbrella.

A real frothy treat.

skulking through the swelling peace and fire of  the desert.

Fearing that someone, somewhere, is drowning in something they have mistaken for happiness, or rain.

hermit
from the Greek ἔρημος Ä“remos, signifying “desert”, “uninhabited”, hence “desert-dweller”
itus
This suffix has come to mean “inflammation of” but originally it meant “pertaining to” or “of the”
da-itus
The fear that, out there, somewhere, someone is happy

why I love England #12:generous heavens

When the heavens open we are blessed with the peaceful hypnotic sound of rain

on the Wendy House roof

on a  summer evening

The curb stones on the streets of Heltson are made of local  granite,   the gutters are deep and floored with local cobbles.   These gutters can both cope with the not insubstantial rainfall of the local climate,   they can look beautiful too.

At Pendennis castle, a wedding party finished their breakfast then photographic sessions in time for the bride to be whisked away by the whirling winds of passion and tears of happiness mixed with the rain.   Beautiful.   A groom tackling a kilt would have added a cherry to my experiential cake.

In 1985 I was sharing an upstairs rented room with another girl in a house shared with five other people. The stairwell was laced with buckets, pots and pans to catch the rain water from the leaky roof that the landlord never got around to fixing. The one toilet was in the original backgarden outhouse, now technically indoors due to a small extension that included the household bath.   If anyone needed to relieve themselves in the night the journey downstairs involved a complex hopscotch  aound the pots and under the raindrops.  Often I ended up with a foot in a pan of cold stinky water, starting a cascade of pots tumbling down the staircase releasing their load on the dubious surface mascerading as a carpet.

Simply Red released ‘Money’s too tight to mention’    

It looks like Englands natural boundary with the Welsh people and Britains  longest river, Severn, has taken pride in recent rainfalls  swelling to  make Tewkesbury an island:   http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/6909162.stm

The grey sky and drizzle here in Seattle across the last week  feels rather pathetic by comparision.  

South West UK:   mostly cloudy with outbreaks of rain

unlike like outbreaks of acne,   outbreaks of rain can be pleasant.   Misty fog with rain and drizzle can seem appealing when you’re not suffering from floods,   like the UK.

North West Pacific:   icky sticky

Here in the NW US,   despite proximity to  rain forests and mountains  on the west,  a reputation for rain and  yet more  mountains and deserts on the east,  we’re having a  hot sink.  

Even the kitties are panting for air conditioning.    

There is definitely a miner surge in the  icky-sticky ratings understated in the weather summary:

Living in a wooden house is still a novelty.   I grew  up in the security of bricks and mortar.   The only noises from the water hammer in the copper pipes as the heating burst into action on a cold day.   Tonight,  I am experiencing my first storm in Seattle.   I hear the wind growing and the house c-c-c-c-creaks.   The lights flicker-ker-ker-ker.   Will I be plunged into darkness any minute?   Time to find my head-torch.

Federal news radio reports:

A powerful storm socked the Pacific Northwest with heavy rain and wind gusts close to 100 mph Thursday, flooding streets, toppling trees and cutting power to thousands.

More than 150,000 customers lost electricity in Washington and Oregon, utilities reported. Additionally, Washington’s largest utility, Puget Sound Energy, said thousands lacked power

The services are watching for floods,   mudslides,   the massive tree’s falling where they could take-out people or power-lines.    At first I thought the locals were always over-reacted to so-called storms.   Calling a snow-flurry a snow-storm.   Tonight I understand, a little more,  why.   The infrastructure is more vulnerable than in Britain.   The tree’s are bigger.   The cables are often overshadowed by trees.   Vulnerable.    The houses are built on the brow’s of hills for the good views.     When the trees on the hillside fall they  unmesh the topsoils,   enable mudslides.    The ‘trouble-spots’ here  are not necessarily known.   In Britain we know the problems through centuries of documented natural events.   Here, many buildings, roads, and  services (power etc) are relatively new,   less than 10yrs old.   The realistic implications of living with this are only really beginning to dawn on me.

Summary impression of the Oregon coast from a British perspective, think of…

• BIG Cornwall with stone cottages replaced by wooden homes.
• Virtually no cell-phone coverage. NO TEXTING
• Big trees. Approximately 3x as tall as anything in the UK as standard issue.
• BIG waves. No surfers due to killer-Trees! Literally big-tree sized logs rolling in the surf.
• Logging. Lots of articulated lorries hauling deliberately felled killer trees inland. This IS Lumberjack country. Sing with me “I’m a lumberjack and I’m OK….”  
• The normal US stuff – wide roads with poor foundations and surfaces – uneven, prone to flooding, lots of cracks, holes, repairs and those big cars they call SUVs
• The same strange bars and cafe’s with inexplicable 1970′s decor, including fake flowers, run by locals with strange hair-styles. It felt like walking into a US centric episode of ‘The League of Gentlemen’

The two photographs below were taken within 2 minutes of each other from the same position. I just turned my body and aligned the camera…

The December Oregon sky is as dramatic as the geography.

To align with one British cultural sterotype here’s a wee bit about the weather:

• Nightly heavy rain. Rain-drops, wearing classic Doc Martens, pogo-ing on the cabin roof. I had to sing REALLY loud to make myself heard.
• River floods seeped onto SR101.
• Mystically foggy mornings. Arthurian Avalon style. The fog rolled from the hills out across to the sea likea dragons breath surrounding Tintagel.
• Vibrantly sunny afternoons with clear skys.

Wendy wet-not-weally-wild

Saturday on the Northwest coast was overcast. Rainy. I went is search of sunshine, drove east through the fabulous cascade mountains. For breakfast I stopped at a ‘Truck Stop’. The car park was full of Trucks and pick-ups. The cafe cooked me a fabulous omelette sandwich. Sunshine filled the sky. Life happening, people moving on and eating. It felt good.

Wendy-on-windy-roads