Courtesy of Eunice

Friday – Flower Friday and the day Storm Eunice arrived.  I had not been looking forward to the early hours of this morning – I kept waking up at what seemed like hourly intervals to see how the winds and storm were progressing.  

We had heavy rain in the early hours and by 4 am , I could hear the sound of the wind picking up, and even more so one hour later. But I must have gone back to sleep for a couple of hours as when I awoke again, the sun was shining, and the wind seemed almost non-existent.  I wondered what had happened thinking somehow, the storm had veered off its projected course, but by the time I was up and downstairs for breakfast, I could hear the wind picking up, but still nothing like I expected.  Even the bin men were on time and so I retrieved the emptied black bin and took it around the back of the house.

As I walked along the patio, I noticed our New Zealand Flax, well that’s what Mrs IU calls it, was moving in the wind, and I had one of my sudden ideas about photo of the day, although not sure if this comes under “Flower” Friday, but hey, it’s creativity.  So, I mounted my iPhone on a tripod, and using Live took a few photos and got this result.

Needless to say, I got my usual “have you lost your mind” kind of look  from Mrs IU when I went back in but told her that the wind had dropped off.  

What I should have said was “It is the calm before the storm, as within half an hour, it was raining again and the wind speed had picked up considerably and by mid-morning, the gusts were getting toward the strength I had been fearing – the kind where fence panels are blasting across the garden or sounds within the house as if the windows were about to implode etc. 

Luckily, it did not come to that, although we did lose electricity twice for a couple of minutes and it was still very unsettling. Sky TV did not seem to like Eunice much either as when I put on the lunchtime news, the picture was flashing quite badly, so I switched over to the terrestrial aerial.  Thankfully, now the winds have died down, the flashing has stopped…I didn’t want a Sky call out charge to fix a problem.

And so with the evening meal eaten, it was time to put on a decent longish action or thriller film whilst I enjoyed a cold beer. Finally, I chose the 1961 epic El Cid with Charlton Heston. Not as grand as Ben-Hur, but then nothing would be.

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