Well, we survived the pre-Christmas Eve storm relatively OK – the wind kept us awake most of the night – at its peak, gusts bashed and bludgeoned the house so violently it was quite frightening. I gather the winds were hurricane force just off the coast.
In the morning we had lost a fence panel and our Christmas lights were all over the place – the singing
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| Whoa – devastation! |
Santas scattered. More storms were expected so we put them all away. Neighbours had lost lots of fencing, roof tiles and telly aerials so we were quite lucky.
At least we had power round here – looking at the map of power cuts Hastings was one of the only places to survive in this area, even though we had some of the strongest winds, so lucky again. We have had a few power cuts since we came to Hastings – more than in Birmingham, not surprisingly. I said to Philosopher that perhaps we should keep a box with candles, camping stove etc, somewhere handy.
The storm seemed to be much worse than the one a couple of months ago, but the response from Government etc has been non-existent – last time they were having COBRA meetings etc, but now there are still thousands with no power and no water and flooded out and nothing has been said on the media. Presumably the Tory toffs are enjoying their Christmas breaks too much to be bothered. It also seemed a bit off to see the Royals haw-hawing about at Sandringham when many people had a ruined Christmas and were suffering considerable hardship. It would not have hurt Wills and Harry to have taken a helicopter for a couple of hours and delivered a few turkey dinners to oldsters or something.
I don’t know if I have mentioned on this blog, but a couple of times in
really wet weather we have a little stream that flows down to the road
from under the house. We have christened it ‘Hamilton Springs’. It first
appeared this time last year, and the neighbours said it had only
appeared once in the last 20 years before that. Well, this year it has
appeared three times more, and this time it was rushing away very
strongly. I took a little video of it, which I will try to post.
Boxing Day was a complete contrast – an absolutely stunning sunny day, so bright it hurt the eyes. We emerged and went for a walk along the sea from St. Leonard’s to the Bexhill Retail Park. I have had a rant about that cycle track/path before on this blog (see here) but this time we noticed that some of the unsuitable plastic grid surface has been ripped up by the sea anyway. I wanted to look in the new Marks and Spencer for some thermal vests in the sale.
‘Thermal vests!?’ I hear the squawks of horror, but these are not normal vests, oh no. When we had the neighbours round for drinks, Linda from across the road was wearing a sparkly purple long sleeve T shirt layered under her dress, which turned out to be from Marks thermal range. It looked excellent, so I went in search of more. It is really hard to find decent, well-shaped, thin layering T shirts to wear under tunics,
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| M and S cafe |
dresses etc., and these are not only thin but warm too.
However, typical, I managed to track down leopard print, grey, black and teal blue, but no sparkly ones left. When I looked on-line, the range seems to have disappeared. They are either £15 or reduced to £10. I would totally recommend them – if you can find any!
Needless to say, even though the new Marks is very large, the range of clothes is still dreadful – frumpy, unflattering colours and cuts. They have paid new people hundreds of thousands to design the range, but it is no better than before. However, the new store does have a cafe with a lovely sea-view.
Last night, the storm was back again – not quite as bad, but it broke another bit of fence, and a big tree blew down in Harold Road. Anyway, here is sunny Bulverhythe – hard to believe it was only yesterday. We are just waiting for Anna and Gareth – they are driving up from Devon.
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| Sunny Bulverhythe – Boxing Day |
Unfortunately you can only view the video on a computer