Well its 2.30 am and we are lying awake listening to the wind howling, and its joined by a few claps of thunder. Storm Eleanor is raging. The dogs are undisturbed, thankfully, albeit one is stone deaf! I console (!) Sam by saying at least we have had 18 years of worry-free windy nights whilst we were no longer boat owners. I guess all boat owners will relate to this. It doesn't matter how much you prepare, sometimes there is just nothing more to be done and all you can do is hope. I did my best to cheer Sam up by reminding him of all the gales that we had endured, the cups of tea in the middle of the night and what was it, oh yes, warm milk, honey and cinnamon - yum. And listening to radio 4, up loud to drown as much of the wind as possible. Sometimes, like hearing Big Ben chime, all appears to be normal and safe when you hear the BBC, despite what is going on outside.
Britannia is safe ashore, but we are still worried about the covers tearing. I am worried about her being blown over, which I know is ridiculous, but we were having gusts of 60 -70 knots from the west which would be hitting her broadside. Somehow, all your fears are magnified at 3am,
Hopefully Storm Eleanor has passed through without too much damage done anywhere or loss of life. A few big trees have come down, sadly, but the ground is very soft after all the rain this last couple of weeks. Some people are without power - it feels like a bad winter so far for storms.
But all is well, when we checked her in daylight there was no damage at all to the canvasses, - everything still snugged down. Sam and John had done a really good job of tying them down.
Yesterday the news was full of health concerns about the amount of sugar being consumed by children, mainly through sugary snacks and drinks. I guess I am lucky not to have a sweet tooth - much prefer savoury snacks, but then, when I was growing up, sweets were still on ration after the war. In fact I believe that they were the last foodstuffs to come off ration, being seen as a luxury, not a necessity. Food rationing started in 1940 and sugar came off ration in 1953 when I was 5 years old. But even after that, sweets and chocolate were in short supply and I guess were quite expensive.
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| 3 children eating carrots on sticks instead of ice-cream! |
Looking back on my own children, I suppose I was quite hard on them regarding sweets. They were only allowed to have a 10 pence mix up once a week, which was a treat much looked forward to. I don't think they thought they were deprived!
When we lived on the remote Hebridean island of Canna, all our groceries were delivered by ferry once a week ( sometimes in the winter, if the weather was bad, we had to wait longer ) so it was easy to stick to the once a week for sweets rule. We also allowed ourselves a bar of chocolate which was shared amongst 5 - supposed to last a week, but usually it was all gone by Saturday night! I guess its easy to be strict when there is no temptation to buy.
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