More Wild Weather

It has only been around a month since I blogged about a terrible hurricane/gale that we had which has since been nicknamed Hurricane Bawbag, and that was the worst one that I had experienced since we moved to this house 24 years ago. Well I didn’t have long to wait for the next one. Last night we ended up downstairs in an attempt to get away from the really terrifying noise of it all. That’s a first because although I’ve ended up downstairs before, Jack has always been happy to stay in bed upstairs.

It was quieter downstairs because we didn’t have the noise of the wind howling through the roofspace and rattling all the slates and it didn’t sound as if the windows were about to fall in. We didn’t get back to sleep so ended up watching the mayhem on News 24.

The wind reached a speed of 102 miles per hour near Edinburgh – guess who lives near Edinburgh! We’ve had a bit of a look around and found that a few slates have been ripped off, some guttering has fallen down and my greenhouse has four broken panes of glass and the skylight/vent had been torn off completely. It could have been a lot worse I suppose as a couple of people in England have lost their lives although the wind there wasn’t so bad. Last winter it was all snow and ice but so far this one has been mainly howling gales. Again all of the bridges were completely shut.

We were lucky and haven’t had any disruptions to our power so we just battened down the hatches as best we could and enjoyed watching Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn in Bringing Up Baby, one from my Christmas boxed set. It’s a good laugh. And in the afternoon Casablanca was on the TV. How many times have I watched that film?! I still love it. So all in all, not a bad day,but a very lazy one!

Christmas Haul

We’re nearly at the end of the year and I still haven’t mentioned any of the books I got at Christmas. So here goes:

A God and his Gifts by Ivy Compton-Burnett
The Old Bank House by Angela Thirkell
The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne

All oldies but hopefully goldies.
We don’t really bother much with big Christmas presents for each other but if we buy anything after the October holidays we tend to say to each other ‘just wrap it up for Christmas’ and that way we get what we want and have no nasty surprises. Yes I know it’s not romantic but it is practical. I hate people (Jack) spending money on things that I really don’t want.

I also got some DVDs – Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple in the shape of Margaret Rutherford – and what a shape she was! She’s the Miss Marple of my childhood and they’re real comfort viewing and always have quite a bit of comedy thrown in as well as crime.

Murder Ahoy
Murder Most Foul
Murder at the Gallop and
Murder She Said

I’ve watched two of them already as the TV hasn’t really been worth watching. On that note I must say that I was disappointed with the new version of The Borrowers, not nearly as good as the previous ones. I must admit that I was playing Scrabble whilst watching it so it didn’t have all of my attention but it just didn’t seem to have much ingenuity involved in it.

I also got a set of Cary Grant DVDs

Charade with the beautiful Audrey Hepburn (1963)
Bringing Up Baby with Katharine Hepburn (1938)
That Touch of Mink with Doris Day (1962)
I’m No Angel with Mae West (1933)

So if I get stuck in the house surrounded by snow and ice, like last year, I’ll have something to keep me entertained!