More nasty weather forecast for today but it was just overcast with occasional drizzle when I got up late, thankful to catch up on sleep after Wednesday's late night. Comedian Mark Steel was on Desert Island Disks. He told the story of knowing early in life that he'd been adopted. Only in later life did he decide to find out about his birth mother, and tracked her down to Rimini in Italy, though she'd run a business in Scotland before retirement. He learned about her but didn't get to meet her before she died. What he found interesting was the characteristics they had in common despite lifelong separation. Definitely a case of nature not nurture due to DNA, and he didn't do an ancestry DNA test, having discovered the background story by coincidence.
I drove to the Bessemer Road recycling depot this morning with two big bags of accumulated garden waste to dump. The city council stopped garden waste collections for the time being, and won't be collecting Christmas trees in the new year. This is said to be due to be lack of funding and labour disputes. I was surprised how little traffic there was on the way there. I called at Lidl's to buy a couple of bottles of wine for Christmas and a chorizo, but still arrived fifteem minutes before the time I booked. There wasn't a queue so I was in and out of the depot in five minutes and on my way home.
I cooked lunch, and after eating went out early for a walk down to Blackweir to inspect the Taff. The water level was up about a metre after yesterday's deluge. One of the trees along the path leading down to the river had blown down overnight. I think it was one I noticed shrouded in moss without leaves this year, probably diseased. The path was already cleared with the trunk and branches on the sides, awaiting clearance. Although rain was predicted, there was nothing more than a few minutes of drizzle while I was out, hoping to avoid torrential rain in Met Office warnings.
With nothing else to do mid afternoon, I watched this week's episode of 'Shetland' which I missed, then went out again for a walk as it was getting dark, noticing the houses in the streets which now have lights decorating their front gardens or lit Christmas trees in their front rooms. Again, although rain was forecast there were only a few sprinkles of rain while I was out, and no wind.
In the six o'clock news the impending seriousness of storm 'Darragh' now approaching from the west, with a red alert warning of risk to life was underlined by the announcement that an emergency alert would be broadcast over the mobile phone network, which would sound and be accompanied directly by a page of information and an audio message. This would be independent of any weather app notification, and would override any 'do not disturb' setting. Such a facility should have alerted Valencianos to the deluge which took over two hundred lives recently, but wasn't issued quickly enough in the first instance, but has been used since, I understand.
While we were having supper and listening to the Archers, our phones emitted a warning sound louder than what I thought the phones' loudspeakers would be able to sustain without breaking, and there was a page of information and voice message as well. Fine, now we know it works, but it happened twice more within the hour, rather disconcerting. Still only light rain and little wind. It may be quite different along the coast with news reports from Penarth and Porthcawl saying that wind speeds were building.
Two miles inland up the Taff, only light rain and wind so far this evening. The fifty metre high western escarpment overlooking the Cardiff flood plain shields us from the full force of wind and rain when it comes from a particular direction. When the direction of the weather front changes enough, northwest or southwest, we'll get the full force of it. It sounds like we're going to have seventy mile an hour wind for the next couple of days. I spent the rest of the evening until bed time enjoying reading 'Las luces de Septiembre'
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