July Storms

An astonishing thunderstorm last night. It was hot all afternoon and no cooler as the sun went down. I wrote the house journal on the terrace with a beer and a candle, watching slow, heavy lilac clouds building on the other side of the valley. Distant rumbles and tall flashes of lightning far away to begin with, but near enough to light the heavy clouds in great vertical flashes, turning the clouds a hundred grey colours from a deep angry almost-black to a brilliant white. The rain was torrential, the wind very strong, but only in short bursts. Loud constant rumbles of thunder as the storm passed overhead, bright lightning flashes and then flashes muffled by the clouds. It went on for an hour and a half or more as we slowly dozed and settled into deeper sleep.

It reminded me that Thomas Hardy's grandmother always remembered what a hot summer it had been for the French Revolution, presumably for the storming of the Bastille in 1789.