A grey bank holiday here

The seemingly unremitting grey dampness is continuing for the bank holiday in my neck of the woods. Prospects for East Devon in the lee of Dartmoor sound more promising but even just a glimpse of the sun here would be cheering. There is so much moisture around that some local roads have moss growing out of the centre of the tarmac where vehicle wheels aren't tracking! When I was a paid employee it was certainly frustrating to find oneself stuck indoors when the sun shone and then be greeted with rain at the weekend! Now at least I have a degree of flexibility enabling me to enjoy the sun when it does make an appearance; there is plenty of outside work that needs doing but the cloudy skies don't help one's motivation.

Having made a point about the rather depressing weather I am hearing the news of the devastating forest fire uncomfortably close to Los Angeles in which a couple of firefighters have lost their lives. Recently too there were bad fires near Athens and not so long ago the south end of the lovely island of La Palma in The Canaries also suffered a bad blaze. Having been to the last mentioned I can visualise where this was. In this instance it is believed a stray firework was the instigator of the fire. The news bulletins in the UK are good enough at reporting these fires but I never get a sense of how long it takes to get them finally extinguished. I suppose the problem is that when a fire ceases to threaten life and property it stops being noteworthy so far as the media are concerned.

So would I prefer to live in a hot sunny climate with my home under risk of being consumed in a firestorm or would it be better to live somewhere such as the Tamar Valley with less sunshine than one would like. A no-brainer really: I'll stick with my valley!

UPDATE: Monday evening. I shouldn't have been so pessimistic in this morning's post! At lunchtime it brightened up, all right not wall to wall sunshine but quite good enough to get some essential work done in the garden. I know that many people, especially if they have families living elsewhere, want to get out and about over the bank holiday but I've never felt the compulsion to use the extended weekend in this way. One reason being my dislike of crowds allied to the fact that I just don't want to do the same as the majority.