In Like a Lion, Out Like a Lamb........

That's what they say about March normally anyway.......

Hullo ma wee blog,

This mornings trip to Dunbar for the lovely G's train to work started earlier than normal, planned after last nights storm delayed return from work, taking into consideration the flooding already becoming problematic on the A1 past Torness power station at 7pm on the road home.

I listened to the hooligan wind screaming around the house last night from the warmth of bed thinking that I couldn't remember worse in the 8 years we have been here. I woke several times across the night yet wasn't tempted to follow my nocturnal habit, to head for the kitchen and night time comfort of coffee and blogging, happy for once to stay comfortably imprisoned by the several hundred banshees at the window and their howled demands to be let in. The wind kept me awake as the house creaked and groaned in her fight to keep us sheltered and my thoughts were swept in many directions but always, always came back to shrieking Mother Nature angrily demanding my attention. Jess, determinedly shouldered deeper into the duvet at our sides as she found her own ways of communing with sleep. Easy for a cat. The lovely G slept easily too. {I have often thought she may be part cat herself}. Eventually, as she does, sleep quietly claimed me and took me through to an early rise.

It was clear that things hadn't changed for the better as I peered out at the dark and the gloom this morning. Mother Nature still in angry voice, the trees in the garden shaking hard to loosen night from their shoulders, rain beating against the front of the house and, barely seen across the garden and drive, our enormous hedge swaying and twisting in the melee like some wild, threatening wall of malevolence straining to break free of the earth and launch itself in a suicidal charge at the house. I shuddered and made an unusual-for-me plan to head back to bed after the trip to the station, to seek comfort and solace in warmth for an hour or so. After all, I don't intend to spend much time out in that if I can avoid it.

By the time we were ready to leave for our journey, inky dark had turned hard grey, the added light doing nothing to make the scene beyond the window pane any more inviting. Suitably bundled in protective clothing we made eyes at each other as I opened the door and we stepped out to drive and car, immediately assaulted by a face full of wind and rain that stung and took the breath away, sharp intake of icy cold and a wince at stinging cheeks, loud exclamations as we slammed car doors shut against the reality of the day.

We ploughed through the flooded bottom of the drive and emerged onto the rain and wind scoured road, were blown up the hill and out of the village, the sea barely discernible from my favourite viewpoint on the crest of the hill. The car was being buffeted like I have never felt before. You see programmes on extreme weather on TV and this could have had its own slot. The A1, as we joined it, was eerily quiet and I immediately thought that a mile or so ahead we would be faced with blue lights and barricades closing off the section of the road most prone to flooding by muddy water off the fields on either side of the road, as it sometimes is, but surprisingly as I coaxed the car on we met nothing like that. The road which I fully expected to be 'hoodlum' with water was difficult for sure, but passable with care, the road in that section thankfully sheltered from the worst of the wind. The car continued to be pounded by wind and water as we drove on and at times I thought I was actually in a boat, the way the car was pitching. I have never driven in conditions like we met on the most exposed mile or two along the coast, and found myself thinking of lorry drivers until I looked at the sea in the increasing light. It was literally almost indescribable in its violence and seeming intention to wipe the land from its face. Normally this is a placid coast, but sea anywhere can be vicious at times. I thought I had seen all its faces until this morning. It was truly frightening and I uttered an ' Oh my God' to the lovely G beside me and turned my thoughts to any out at sea in that terrible storm and for the lifeboatmen who are a treasured part of our communities hereabouts.

The radio told of countrywide storms, lorries jack-knifed and overturned, multiple accidents, roads closed through flood and fallen trees, of snow so heavy that power lines had come down across Northern Ireland as we carried carefully on our way through roads unusually quiet of traffic, our headlights probing the gloom to show sparkling rain blown horizontally across our path or crashingly head on into the windscreen. A morning of biblical proportion. I dropped G off at the station to find cancelled trains replaced by emergency bus services which would considerably lengthen her journey to work. Despite an offer to drive her on to Edinburgh I was dispatched homeward with a kiss and a 'thanks for getting me here'. A stop for my morning 'Hootsman' newspaper saw me bent almost double in the wind tunnel of Dunbar main street, battered by rain between shop and car. The return journey as eventful as before with the wind at my back occasionally threatening to jolt me into oncoming traffic, or so it seemed, until I turned once more up the drive to the house and its comfortable warmth and companionable cat sitting patiently at the french doors looking askance at the lack of birdlife so necessary for a felines perfect contemplation of day.

As I stepped from the car I lowered my head against the wind for the few steps to sanctuary and received a final benediction of driven rain turned sleet on the top of my head.

March......

In like a lamb and out like a lion more like.......

So much for day four of 'British summer time'
Brrrr!!

See you later.

Listening to - the kettle boil so I can thaw out.