There was yet another major storm yesterday. The hailstorm was so intense that it set off the car alarms in the car park at work! The winds were really high, with many branches down between home and work and even some dustbin lids bowling down the road. There are floods in Worcester and Upton that are causing severe disruption – colleagues are telling tales of their journeys to work taking two hours longer than usual. Several of the bridges over the River Severn are shut, leading to long detours and very heavy traffic over the few open bridges.
I was working from home yesterday afternoon, as I’d arranged several weeks ago for the electrician to come back to fix my external security light and replace the extractor fan in my en-suite bathroom, a job left over from before Christmas. I’ve used this electrician a number of times over the past few months, and he’s always turned up on the day advertised, but never at the time promised. He also doesn’t seem to answer his mobile, so when he didn’t turn up at lunch time yesterday, I had no way of getting hold of him to see if he was on his way, or how late he expected to be. In fact, it was probably just as well that he was several hours late, as by the time he eventually arrived here the winds had abated and the rain stopped (albeit temporarily) so it was safe for him to go up a very long ladder to fix my security light. If he’d turned up when I naively expected him, the hail and torrential rain would have made it too dangerous.
However, the light got fixed, the extractor fan was replaced, and I am hoping that I won’t need an electrician again for quite a while. But another huge storm is expected tomorrow, so anything could happen. On the positive side, it will allow me to check that my leaking roof has indeed been fixed before I get the painter back next month to redecorate the ceiling.
