We’ve had mad weather this summer in France. Days so cold that Graham & I have been wearing jeans (cords in Graham’s case), sweaters and socks: autumn weather, interspersed with gloriously sunny ones. This weekend, though, has been a different story. It has been hot with a capital H, and I’m not normally one to complain about the heat. It is so hot that as I write this on the terrace at 10PM I know why there are still people swimming in the Dordogne from the Plage des Bardolets, opposite; why many are only now sitting down to supper. The first zephyrs of a cooler breeze are just arriving. It was 36°C in the shade today. As it was yesterday. The French word for this heat wave is “canicule”. Some words are easier to remember than others.
At the moment we’ve no guests staying at Les Terraces so I suggested to Graham that after lunch we descend to the delicious coolness of the ground floor and crash on the settee and listen to the England-India test match on the radio. The ground floor must have been 10° cooler than the 2nd floor. It was so cool that I even got a fleece from one of the footstools to cover me! We slept soundly until 8PM!
As I write I’m watching the weather back at home in the BVI as there they are experiencing the first feeder bands of Tropical Storm Irene. The airports have all been closed and over the course of the next 24 hours they expect to have 10″ of rain. That will cause major flooding and, most likely, sections of road, or at least the tarmac surfaces, to wash away. Hopefully it will all be done and dusted by mid-morning tomorrow and no-one will have sustained too much damage, but a friend lost everything when last November’s heavy rains (40″ in 40 days) left her with 3′ of water throughout her house and this new deluge can’t be good news for her.
Sadly, The Pub’s “anything that floats but a boat” and “sinking dinghy” races will also have fallen victim to today’s weather. It is a fun event and one that is normally a highlight of the dog days of summer in Tortola. Mo will be disappointed, as he always participates in, and normally wins, the sinking dinghy race.
As hot as it has been here in France today I think that I’d rather be here with our weather than back in the BVI facing a tropical storm. Fingers crossed that they’re all OK.
PS: Canicule means heat wave