Like many people we had torrential rain and dramatic thunderstorms yesterday and it looks like we’ll be getting a repeat performance today too.  The power went off at work which is a real pain as computers don’t respond well to sudden power spikes, even with protective power supplies in place.  All was well, though we did end up playing Botticelli for half an hour while we waited for things to get back to normal.  I had to be home by 4pm yesterday, so I set off early, only to be brought up short a few hundred yards from the turning into our country lane by a rather impressive flood.  There is a haulage yard just on the corner and a the beck running through it had burst it’s banks  causing a waist deep small pond.  I know it was waist deep because I was told by a poor chap who had had got stuck in it and had to abandon his car.  Plus I could see into the car park and all the cars were up to their wheel arches in water

Luckily there is another way in which goes over higher ground, so I got home safely and warned Adrian to take the longer route and avoid the flood.  In the evening he wanted to go and see this big dramatic flood I’d told him about, so we headed off in his car (which has much higher ground clearance) and approached it from the other side only to suffer a bit of an anticlimax – it had all completely vanished!  The evidence was there – the road was covered in silt and the car park that should have been empty at 7pm was still full of cars, but other than the beck being right up to the top of its banks, our flash flood was gone.

The evening proved to be the best part of the day so we took a long round about trip home which took us through the private estate road and stopped to take some photos. There is never any traffic on the estate road, just cattle and sheep and when you stop the car the air is full of birdsong.  We stood and looked around at the gently steaming fields and took a moment to drink in the peace and stillness and freshness that you get after a storm.

The battered, weather-beaten poppies still managed to put on a beautiful show of colour.

A storm is such an apt metaphor for those really difficult times in life and I think it’s important to celebrate that stillness and peace that comes after a storm.  I find metaphors a great way of capturing an idea and expressing it and often use them in my journals to help me make sense of things.

Earlier this year I did a journal page about my own storm and I’m actually going to do something I don’t often do, which is share what I wrote in the hope it may strike a chord and help someone else to keep on going through their own troubles.

“I’ve been through a STORM.  You can’t do anything in a storm, but put your head down and battle through it.  Well, unless you want to be tossed around like a leaf and battered about.  Head down, plod on, one step at a time.  Eventually the storm will pass. It always does.  The skies will clear and the landscape is washed clean.

But … this new landscape – it’s familiar, but different.  I don’t quite recognise it.  There’s new paths washed clean and I don’t know which way to go.

There’s bits of storm debris still kicking about, piling up where the wind has blown it.  Don’t sift through it – leave it to the wind and time and MOVE ON …”

The storm will always pass and sometimes it reveals a new and unexpected landscape which you wouldn’t have seen otherwise.

Here’s hoping you stay snug and dry as this current weather system plays itself out – both literally and metaphorically!