What a day! I have to say that I hope I never forget this afternoon as long as I have left to live. OK, so what was so dramamtic? Well, actually it was such a simple thing, it proves the rule that the simplest things in life are the most special. I couldn't have engineered it to happen or bribed it or set about making it happen, it just did and it was beyond my control.

I got home about 8 a.m. from work and had a bite to eat before going to bed. I had a lot to do this afternoon and wanted to get up around 2 to start. I crashed fairly quickly and slept like the dead ( as I am want to do) only to be woken at about 2 o'clock by the sound of thunder! What a perfect way to wake up, snug as a bug ( a very big ugly, bug) in my nice warm bed, refreshed and awake with sounds of rain on the window above my head and the distant roll of thunder in the background. Things like that aren't made, they just have to happen. I got up after a while and had the shower and cuppa and then the storm really hit hard, I stood in the window with my cuppa, watching the rain pelt down all around. the trees were so unused to hard rain (it's been a while) they were swaying to and fro in their dry soil beds. I thought for a moment we would lose one or two. The trees are atill standing and windows are clean.

My son called a while later to tell me that the rain on his side of town had come down as hail and that he had been caught in it while riding his bike home. The little hero has always liked riding in the rain and was quite happy to get drenched while riding home on the back of my Harley one afternoon in the rain. I had thought he was telling me to slow down so I did, and asked him if he was alright. He was about 12 at the time and I thought he must be misreable on the back of the bike in the pelting rain, wet as a drowned rat. He asked me why I had slowed down, he had been singing! Well, while others cowered in the shelter this afternoon, my little hero rode on through the rain and hail and slush just like the postal service.

In the mean time I did all my errands and had my lunch and listen still to the rain on the windows, what a perfect day.

C xxxx