I’m in France and today, after high temperatures and hot, close, sticky weather, it’s Il pleut comme vache qui pisse.
Like a cow peeing.
In England, we’d say it’s raining cats and dogs. But not here. And, to be fair, a cow peeing is much more descriptive. I have never seen cats and dogs coming down from the sky like stair rods, have you? Imagine being hit on the head by a dalmatian or a ginger tom.
There are breaks in the cloudbursts and I’m hoping it’ll be fine this afternoon because we’re off for afternoon tea, a late birthday present to me from Mr Grigg.
And then in the evening, there is our village’s Fete de Voisins – a gathering of neighbours on the green next to the boulodrome.
We’ll bring food and drink to share but, if it carries on peeing like the proverbial cow, we might just have to go under cover to eat it.
At the moment, the birds are cowering in the trees, and the occasional soggy blue tit ventures out to peck at the fat balls.
Here, as in other parts of Europe, the swallows have made the most of the hot days of late summer, swooping in great swarms, hollering in between the rainstorms, before gathering on the telephone lines to contemplate the long journey south for the winter.
Although, apparently, a run of mild winters in recent years has seen small numbers of swallows attempting to spend the winters in Britain instead of migrating 6,000 miles.
With September here today and children going back to school or starting college and university, there is a change in the air.
The last hurrah.
Maddie Grigg 