Shades of ’76?

Well, that’s it then. May, my favourite month of the year, has been and gone – and not with a whimper, but with a bang. Many of them, in fact.

After almost two months of scorching weather, virtually without rain of any description, there was a momentous storm on Monday, with rain so torrential you might have thought you were in Kuala Lumpur.

I’d just got back with the hound from the château I look after as one of my many gainful jobs, fiddling around with the swimming pool there, trying to balance the pH and wondering what to do with the copious deposits of algae that must have flourished undercover during April’s heat wave. The blue sky had suddenly clouded over and turned the colour of a granite work surface. The first big drops of rain had appeared on the windscreen as we neared home. There was just enough time to run to the four corners of the house to check that the down-pipes were all in ‘fill-rain-butt’ mode.

Safely indoors, I turned off the computer smartish and un-plugged the Neufbox and the telephone. Then, there was nothing to do but watch and wait. I wandered out onto the terrace from time to time to peer over the edge and check the level of the nearest rain-butt. It seemed a bit slow at first and then even threatened to stop, but a second wave swept in across the valley and once the Kuala Lumpurn rain began to fall, all four tanks were full in a thrice. There was no way I was going to dash out into the maelstrom to close off the down-pipes, so I just had to watch the splash-backs soak the walls.

The Daughter phoned half way through the downpour. ‘Is it raining there, dad?’ ‘Yes, it’s raining dogs [as she used to say when she was very small]. Is it raining in Brive?’ ‘It certainly is. Are you happy now?’

Yes, I was happy – despite the fact that the force of the rain was washing away the surface of our drive and gouging out more ravines. But I was almost happy enough to run outside and dance in it. I was happy to know that I wouldn’t have to water the flowers and vegetables that evening, and happy for all the wildlife in the woods, scratching around desperately in search of moisture. We’ve talked in recent weeks of how terrible it must be to live in somewhere like India or Africa, where your life literally depends on the vagaries of the weather.

Despite the rain, there have been ominous rumblings among the country folk here about the worst drought in the making since 1976. ‘Ah yes, I ree-mem-bare it well…’ I spent most of August that year in the Channel Islands with my disreputable friend, Simon. We started off in Sark and got kicked off by a policeman they fetched from Guernsey for illegal camping. One morning, there was a scratching at our tent, pitched perilously close to the edge of a cliff. The policeman told us that we’d have to take the late afternoon boat back to Guernsey. Simon and I debated the idea of hiding out in the copses of the Dame’s island, living on nuts and berries and stealing foodstuffs in the dead of night, but in the end we felt we’d enjoy ourselves more across the water. From the boat, we saw the policeman scanning the passengers from the quayside. So we hid ourselves, only to pop up at the last minute and give the man a cheeky wave.

The rest of that sun-baked month, we spent camping in Saint Sampson and living on bread, tomatoes and the bag of ‘erb we’d smuggled on board with us at Weymouth. We hired bicycles and spent each day gradually exploring the island, moving from one cove to the next and pegging out in the sun. We went to see Bugsy Malone one evening in St. Peter’s Port’s little old-fashioned cinema, so pie-eyed on grass and so transfixed by the images on screen that we believed that we were watching the greatest film ever made. I seem to remember being nominated to ask the usherette about the last bus back to Saint Sampson.

Michael, the silent destroyer, mobbed by team mates

Another time in a bar, I think, we watched images from the 5^th and final test match against the West Indies from the Oval, which was so denuded of grass that it looked like an Arabian sandpit. Michael Holding was at his silky and lethal best and Viv Richards (Dennis Amiss, too, I believe) plundered a double century.

As a student, the summer of 1976 was just one long idyllic meteorological aberration. The weather broke almost the very day we got back to the mainland. Simon and I split up to hitch our way back to our different destinations, where we would show off our resplendent suntans to the girls who awaited our return.

In this part of France, the drought lasted until October apparently. The thought of another summer like that one – now with new added adult responsibilities – just fills me with horror. You are old, brother Markus, you are old/You will wear the bottoms of your trousers rolled…