I had absolutely no intention of going out for a walk this morning. It was stormy overnight and I wholly expected it to be pouring with rain.
To my surprise, when I opened the curtains to see if the cats were sat on the trellis waiting to be fed, I could see crisp, clear light in the distance. So I grabbed my phone and looked at the weather app – sunshine this morning. Hmmm. Unexpected.
Before my partner headed out, he asked me if this was the ‘calm between the storm’. I told him that it must be. He left and I looked at my phone again, staring vaguely at the sunshine and cloud picture for this morning. Flicking to tomorrow, a walk is unlikely to be on the cards. Storm’s comin’ at 3am apparently. So I quickly changed into some clothes and headed outside. I wanted to make the most of the calm.
There were a number of different ‘acts’ to my walk. Act 1 to Honington was idyllic. There were so many birds singing in the trees. Enough to distract me from the cars and lorries storming past me on the awful national speed limit road. There was a thrush of some kind (maybe a song thrush), goldfinches, long-tailed tits and blue tits. The footpath is lined with hedgerows and trees and they weren’t even blowing around much. It felt very calm.
The second act took me through Honington itself. I walked past the noisy rookery at the edge of the main road and headed towards the river. The river wasn’t as high as I thought it’d be – this was a relief. I had worried when I set off that the bridge might not be passable. There were more blue tits and some chaffinches on this stretch too.
But I suddenly started to doubt the calm. In the distance on my left, past a village called Tredington, I could see part of a rainbow. But a rainbow needs rain. And it wasn’t going to rain. I dismissed it – my app said it wasn’t going to rain. Isn’t it funny? That blind trust in an app when all the observational information is telling you something different?!
As Act 2 progressed, the rainbow grew bigger and bigger. The small part that I initially spotted became a full, beautiful arc. Realisation dawned. This wasn’t going to be the ‘calm’ was it. And, indeed, the third act brought rain and wind. And the wind was the most formidable of the forces – the sound of it speeding through the trees was terrifying. It was a roar. I kept walking, vaguely looking around for shelter ‘just in case’, but I knew I was caught in it now – there was no shortcut home and no shelter. I’d say it only lasted for around 5 minutes but I was shook. I didn’t get soaked. It was the wind that had shaken me.
A lighter wind continued through the rest of the third act. It had settled down but it was still there. As the roaring had mercifully stopped, I took a moment to watch a red kite soaring on the waves in front of the sunrise. Kites always love this kind of weather. I can’t imagine what it must be like to ride this sort of wind. I like to think they enjoy it.
Act 4 brought the finale. As I re-entered Shipston from the other side of town, the sun shone and the birds sang once again. I wondered whether the town had even had any of the rain – perhaps my app was right. Maybe Honington was due to get the wind and rain, but not Shipston. Maybe it had been calm here all along. Regardless, I’d certainly experienced the not-so-calm-between-the-storm and, when I arrived back at my front door, another storm was waiting for me. Jolene. 😹
Ramblings of a (very!) amateur artist 
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