Wuthering Heights. Named storms. Storms of violence. Rushing towards a No-Deal. And that virus.

After the rather unpromising start to yesterday, dull and damp but not actually raining until I returned from the market, my daughter and I kept an eye on the weather through the day and decided in the mid- to late-afternoon that we were going on an “adventure” anyway, taking our waterproofs with us as an insurance policy.

So we headed off up the hill to Heights once again. On our way up the hill we debated abandoning Heights and doing a detour to see if we could find the llama farm which is said to be around their somewhere. Our almost four-year-old adventure expect, however, opted for the churchyard once again. Strange child, she likes to roam around between the ancient gravestones, finding interesting bits of this and that to examine.

The view from the churchyard was positively Wuthering Heights with lowering, glowering clouds. 

As we made our way down, though, the wind shifted much of the cloud cover and the sun tried to come out.

By the time Phil and I walked round the village in the early evening it was positively balmy once again. Francis had well and truly stormed off but Hurricane Laura was on her way to Louisiana.

Between hurricanes and wildfires, not to mention continuing Coronavirus, the USA has enough to deal with from Mother Nature, without having race riots as well. And yet, there it is. The situation isn’t helped by people accepting it as normal that people can walk down the street with an assault rifle. I still don’t understand why such a weapon is acceptable, even in a country where gun-ownership seems to be considered reasonable. I suppose 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse who is said to have shot two people in Kenosha might have thought it made him look good.

Apparently there was a call on Facebook from a local militia group: “Any patriots willing to take up arms and defend our city tonight from evil thugs?” (When Facebook talks about policing what goes on its site, is this not one of the things they should be banning?) nobody knows whether that young man responded to the Facebook post or went out to be a vigilante on some other kind of prompting. What is clear from videos people have made is that on Tuesday night, Kenosha police were heard thanking and tossing bottled water from an armored vehicle to what appear to be armed civilians walking the streets.

As somebody tweeted:

“In Wisconsin open carry is illegal for someone under 18.
The Kenosha cop who gave right-winger Kyle Rittenhouse a water bottle and said his presence is appreciated could have instead asked for ID and then arrested him.
That would have saved two lives.”

Quite so!

Here on our side of the Atlantic, we appear to be hurtling towards a no-deal Brexit as Brussels laments a “completely wasted” summer and removes Brexit item from the agenda for a high level diplomatic meeting next week. Well, that means we can blame the EU for that next bit of mess-up. Time to start stockpiling supplies now, I think!

Meanwhile, with reports of teenagers returning from a Greek holiday with Coronavirus, and many unwittingly going out on the razzle in Plymouth, making tracing contacts a bit more difficult, I’ll just continue to worry about health matters. So it goes!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!