Clearing The Air

Well it's been even hotter here in Fairview Heights today, with the mercury substitute hitting thirty-two Celsius late afternoon. We did some more kebabs on the barbecue: this afternoon's fire being lit in a jury-rigged affair built of otherwise redundant storage heater bricks atop my old Black and Decker Workmate, as the easy-to-light charcoal bag was too big for the the little kettle barbecue I used for yesterday's meal. I've used these bricks many times before for building temporary cooking structures: they are ideally suited for the purpose, as they hold heat wonderfully. I fully intend to build a permanent pizza oven with them sometime, now my collection has grown sufficiently so to do. My motto, like my dad's is not to chuck out anything that can possibly be of use in the future: it's a philosophy that works more often than not.

After we'd eaten al fresco in the baking heat and cleared the patio table of our stuff, I decided to sit out there and read for a while over a beer. Then the clouds started to form. Pictured was the first break in the sunshine and blue sky all day and the first inkling that a change was imminent, and behind these nascent beginnings of a storm, the skies were turning very black from the southwest. So I duly packed everything away and retreated to the conservatory to watch the inevitably approaching storm. Some moderately entertaining flashes of lightning and muted rolls of thunder later, it has passed over to the north. Still the air is now mercifully clearer than it was, and a good night's rest seems in the offing...