Over the years I have often blogged about the rain. We live in one of the wettest areas of England and Wales.

Above is how it is supposed to look in Summer.

Here it is today:

It won’t be long before the golden hills are brown as the sheep eat the last of the dead grass but that is perhaps not a bad thing as at the moment every thing on the ground is tinder dry. Yesterday the valleys of this part of Mid-Wales were obscured by smoke which, by the magic of Facebook we learned was coming from wild fires. Even from the top of the hill we couldn’t see any flames. So they were not about to engulf us; the nearest was a good 15 miles away; so you can imagine how extensive it was but under control by the time the smoke reached us.

As I headed home with my shopping I passed more vehicles than I have ever seen in our valley, all heading towards the source of the smoke; farmers, I guess, heading out to help.

Today all is clear.

I’m off to check the well again and Bill is filling the buckets with rainwater from the butts, to flush the loo; once a day each. We take “Being careful with water” very seriously. If we, with our catchment of 25 of the wettest acres in Britain can see our stocks dwindling so alarmingly; I wonder how long the taps will continue to work in our towns and cities.

Seems every decade we have to worry about something new.

On the point of posting this both our phones screamed loudly: SEVERE ALERT — something really important but written only in Welsh — no translation available — I am thrown, in panic, upon my linguistic skills — the Welsh dictionary is conveniently on the table… It’s definitely something to do with fire… Minutes later, the phone screams again — this time in English, so now we know that we must not light the barbeque.

I’m going out to cut down the kindling growing around the house.