Rainy Season

Today was the church fete, but the rain held off until tea time.  We had guests so didn't go, but it seems a very British thing, a summer fete, something elegant and dignified and precarious and ever so slightly silly.  Instead we wandered around the village in the stuffy warmth, watching small boys with water pistols and having a glass of beer overlooking the valley.  We showed them the church and I sat in the porch with the dog, thinking about how many other 600 year old porches I had sat in, and how short a period of its life my sit was.  

Now it is 10.15 and I am listening to the steady silvery roar of the rain in the garden, listening to it from different rooms, from different open windows.  Warm rain is a summer pleasure; I went out to check the cloche'd plants were getting enough water and the air was damp and warm, even at 9pm.  An early dusk but we need the rain.  The solid iron box of the wood-burning stove becomes the heart of the house again, warming copper pipes and the surrounding stonework; turned right down to nothing it will burn slowly all night, to spring to life again when we go down in the morning.  Stone responds well to water, cooling the rooms in summer and retaining the stove's heat in the winter.  It is an evening for the soft ruddy glow on bare walls, candlelight and open windows.