Stormy weather!

Although Hurricane Irma has now dissipated and lost strength, the havoc she left behind is all too clear. I was looking at photos of the Florida Keys this morning and was horrified to see the state of the main road running through the islands and the damage caused to buildings. I think it will be quite some time before things return to normal. Sadly it looks like the mid Keys have suffered the most with reports of damage and flooding in Marathon, where we stayed last month. I only hope that the lovely places we saw weren't too badly affected.

Today, though, we had a weather warning of our own - the first storm of the season, Aileen, was set to affect us this evening and into tomorrow. Sophie was at work today, and Mike at college, so we dropped them both off and popped to Aldi to get some things we had forgotten yesterday, namely dishwasher tablets! On the way to pick up my car from the garage we called to see Mum and had a cup of coffee. It's been a bright and very breezy day today with a strengthening wind, but at least we had a "Florida sky"!

My car cost me £239, which was a bit more than I was expecting, but on the way home there was an ominous rattle coming from the back near the windscreen wiper. I arrived home and told Keith and we fiddled about with the boot cover and then went for a short drive. It was no better and when we stopped to investigate, we found the cover hadn't been put back properly and a screw was bouncing around inside. When Keith removed it and attached the cover back firmly, it stopped! I have to say that the wiper is a lot smoother and absolutely silent now, so I think it must have been going wrong for quite some time. It would make a horrible juddering, scraping noise whenever I turned it on and it's much improved now!

At work we were ousted from the hall as there was a meeting on, so we used the much smaller and much more cosy library. As the weather was still dry and sunny, we spent much of the session outside with the children playing on the new pirate ship in the playground. They even ate their snack outside which was lovely - let's make the most of it while we can!

After work I dashed off to pick up Sophie and Mike from work. Mike had walked to Moulton after college and I saw him in the main street of the village before I reached Sophie's work. After our dinner of "starter and dessert" (pate and trifle) we watched another two episodes of Tin Star starring Tim Roth. It's riveting! Outside the rain started in earnest and the wind was blowing like mad. Aileen had arrived!