What’s in a name

We seem to have a hurricane season now here in the UK and North Atlantic Europe. This is new in this part of the world. They name the storms alphabetically (except Q, U, X, Y and Z), so Storms Austen and Boelo rolled through here over the weekend. Interestingly, the storms in the North Atlantic here are named by the different meteorological offices in the UK, Ireland and the Netherlands. It turns out Mother Nature is indifferent as to whether we are still in the European Union or not. We await Chloe, but two named storms knocking out 90,000 people’s power supplies in the UK is probably enough for one weekend.

It does remind me of my childhood on Long Island, where hurricane preparation was always a reminder of how stuck in the North Atlantic that island is. We’re not up to the level where you have to board up the windows in the neighbourhood and get the sandbags filled, but I look at my gas hob with comfort. It is a legacy of growing up in a place where the electricity can go out. You can still light that with a match, after all. And camping lamps are handy things when the lights go out. Dig out the Cluedo and Duo cards, folks.

At any rate, it was a weekend for comfort food. We stayed indoors and ate melted Chaourse cheese and roasted garlic on bread I had made from whatever flour was still in the house. As I couldn’t be bothered to go out to buy more bread or flour in this downpour. In between rain showers I did manage to get out and re-seed the back lawn. It seemed to half die over the heatwaves this summer and then decided to grow back largely as weeds. I did manage to plant some creeping thyme, which is happy enough, and also bought some drought resistant lawn seeds.

It’s just another example of how we have to make things work in this global warming era. I shall sit down with the seed catalogues soon. Stay warm and dry, folks.

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