I hadn't imagined I'd see hail in Gozo, I was mistaken. I should have seen it coming, you know you're in for it when the global weather forecaster singles you out, they are normally concerned with typhoons in the China Sea or hurricanes in America, but
they had warned me and goodness did it come down today.
I sat watching it from my sofa, feet up on the table, bullets of marble-sized ice clattering the windows. I stood to fetch coffee to find my feet wet. Some critical mass had been reached outside my door and freezing cold water was pouring in from under it. Seldom great in a crisis, my brain searched through the fug of ancient database to determine what one does in the event of a flood.
Probably not, I decided, be standing bare-foot in water through which my laptop electric cable and transformer were draped, submerged. Jolted into action, figuratively rather than literally, I unplugged it, and everything else which came to hand. I grabbed towels and plugged the breach under the door through which water was still gushing. Immediate peril having been averted after my thankfully seldom called-upon manful action, I sat and thought it would be best just to let the hail stop before taking any further remedial action.
It did stop, I bailed water with a dustpan back out the door from whence it had come, to find Mrs B, my redoubtable landlady in some concern about the hill behind the house. It seems the double-wall between us and the hill wasn't quite as double as it might be, and we were most likely to be soon engulfed in several tonnes of hail-besodden mud. I left her to it, my life here is clearly not to be as tranquil as I'd hoped.
they had warned me and goodness did it come down today.
I sat watching it from my sofa, feet up on the table, bullets of marble-sized ice clattering the windows. I stood to fetch coffee to find my feet wet. Some critical mass had been reached outside my door and freezing cold water was pouring in from under it. Seldom great in a crisis, my brain searched through the fug of ancient database to determine what one does in the event of a flood.
Probably not, I decided, be standing bare-foot in water through which my laptop electric cable and transformer were draped, submerged. Jolted into action, figuratively rather than literally, I unplugged it, and everything else which came to hand. I grabbed towels and plugged the breach under the door through which water was still gushing. Immediate peril having been averted after my thankfully seldom called-upon manful action, I sat and thought it would be best just to let the hail stop before taking any further remedial action.
It did stop, I bailed water with a dustpan back out the door from whence it had come, to find Mrs B, my redoubtable landlady in some concern about the hill behind the house. It seems the double-wall between us and the hill wasn't quite as double as it might be, and we were most likely to be soon engulfed in several tonnes of hail-besodden mud. I left her to it, my life here is clearly not to be as tranquil as I'd hoped.