Weather and work

I'm sure everyone is fed up of hearing about the British weather, discussing it is our all consuming pastime. But I must admit, I can't remember another time when it has rained so much and been so cool and windy at this time of year. There have been floods everywhere, local businesses losing all of their stock to the freak conditions and trees broken like matchsticks causing chaos on the roads. One poor soul was queuing in traffic in the next village along when a massive oak just fell....landing on his van. Luckily he told his passenger to get down on the floor as the tree struck, both of them walked away from the scene shaken but mostly unhurt. The road was closed for the rest of the day while they chainsawed the lovely old tree into manageable chunks and removed it. The old church yard where it grew looks so different now, it's like a huge slug has eaten a chunk out of the vegetation!

We have been lucky in many ways, yes the drive and garden have been under a fair few inches of water, veg and border plants have struggled to survive and most worryingly we haven't seen our tame blackbird Mrs B for about two weeks now, (hopefully she's raising young....) But all in all the only real problems it has caused is with work, nothing is drying as quickly as it should. Humidity is always a problem when you're trying to glue, polish or refinish furniture so all of these things are taking much longer than normal to do, frustrating, but not life threatening!

We've had a lot of work to do over the past two weeks, dozens of cane panels, a glut of rush armchairs, more chapel chairs for St. Michael's Mount and even a couple of unusual Danish drop-on seat pads.

At the weekend we needed to go to the yard to get some rattan poles out of storage for some customer orders. No problem you'd think, but the yard is next to the airport and you have to cross a causeway over the river to get there. Well, you've probably guessed, we got there to find the water gently lapping 12" over the top of the highest point of the causeway and one car already broken down after trying to get through it! We turned back for home. By the time we had a chance to go again two days later the water had gone down, but only just below the level of the road.

As I type it has started to rain.....AGAIN! Heavy almost hail like blobs are beating on the roof of the workshop. Wherever you are please be safe and I hope you can make the most of the day.