Did I say it was sunny yesterday at some point? I forget. Especially as I’ve been woken by wind lashing the rain against the window and the return of my favourite sound, the drip in the ceiling.
I last experienced that sound about eight years ago when we last lived somewhere that had a roof (obviously everywhere we’ve stayed had a roof but we’ve normally been ground or first floor).
Glasgow Road in Dumbarton, top floor flat, our first mortgage. It was one-bedroom, galley style kitchen with a nice size bedroom and living room in an old style tenement building which was constructed around 1910 if memory serves me correctly (there was a stone plaque embedded near the eves, I obviously don’t remember them being built).
I awoke on a night very similar to this one, the wind whipping up the Clyde Estuary slamming rain and debris against our leaky bedroom window. I got up to go to the loo, and as I walked to the foot of the bed I leapt back. Why is there a wet patch on the floor? I wondered.
Anyway, long story short, I ended up in the loft at 4 am, patching up a hole in the roof. It was a temporary botch job designed to get us through the night until we could get someone to come and replace the slates that had been dislodged (not something I fancied trying on the roof of a four floor tenement – I’m not the best with heights).
About a week later I was told I was to be made redundant from my first job. We still hadn’t gotten the roof seen to, and it slipped our minds. We remembered about it one day watching a thunder storm from our living room window in Aylesbury*.
I wonder if the new owners ever got that hole fixed? Or is my black bin bag funnel still in place**?
* Having lived near the coast all of our lives, Louise and I were amazed when our first big summer storm took place. So little wind! Where was the horizontal lashing rain? Fascinating.
** Ingenious this. Two bits of cord tied at sloping angles between the tightly spaced rafters. A black bin bag taped over them so that the drip was caught, then trickled down the bin bag into the water tank (handily right next to the drip).
