So; We'll Talk About The Weather .....

I mean, there's fuck all else to talk about right now. Because of the weather! It's 'The Barren Time' alright. Days are short, hurried and largely just taken up with the usual chores. In fact, it can now be a job in itself to even get all the basic chores done before dark. Today I actually left a small barrow load of shit in the horses pen. Light was going so fast, I'd have been slinging it on the heap in the dark. No point.

And, with the shortening days, we've had the rains ~ naturally. The rains are never far from us here. Not that they've ever particularly effected me, I'm happy to say. The people who built my cottage chose their spot well. The rains come. They pour down from the mountain. They surge down the ditches and swell The Styx far below me.

That, in turn ~ this year at least ~ over spills and floods out the basin of land I sit on the side of. Here's the result. None of the water ye see below has any right being there. All that land I used to traverse in ankle boots. When it's like this? I wouldn't venture out there in rubber boots. Miss a fence and I could vanish into The Styx for ever!


Nigger, bottom right there, would be kicking up water spray on my Home Acre. Cross the deep, dry ditch beneath him and he'd be into Pat's land proper. Over the dark, central band marked by the tree is what I refer to as " The bog ". Pat's lower ground that runs down to The Styx. He used to run his cattle on that. Right now he'd Swim or Wallow them there.

The adjoining part of (part of) Pat's land. Same story. I pursued a rutting Red Stag around the centre right area of this shot, a season or two back. I barely even got the soles of my boots wet. Now? I'd be wading.



Not a complaint. Just wanted to show ye what can happen round here. And I would say 'We're used to it.' Only, we're not. That's to say; I can accept it. Because it doesn't impinge on me. I live up where the shots were taken from. My ground's sodden. Not under feet of water. And, I've only been here less than four years now. I 'know no different'. Likes of Pat, born and bred here, are gutted. They've never known the likes.

Can't help thinking though; If this were england? How long before some well connected shit head Property Developer with friends in the council and the building industry came along and made Pat an offer he'd be stupid to refuse? Then a whole new estate of 'des res' little properties would spring up down there.

And people would buy them. To 'escape to the countryside'. And then the rains would come .....