Doorbells. Donations. Drought - and what it brings to light.

Yesterday evening, quite early in the evening, just after Phil had set off for chess club and before the rain started, the doorbell rang. This is quite unusual. Many people ignore the doorbell completely and either try to use the ineffectual knocker above the letter box or rap the door itself with their knuckles, equally ineffectually! An electricity worker checking cables and installations the other day even told me when I remonstrated with him that he does not trust doorbells! Arrant nonsense! Even if you cannot guarantee that the doorbell works you should at least try it as well as rat-a-tat-tatting on the wood with your knuckles. That’s my opinion anyway!

So when the doorbell rang I thought it might be Phil rushing back for a forgotten item and deciding it was quicker to ring the bell and have me answer the door than to hunt about in his pockets for his keys. But, no, this was not the case. It was smiling gentleman in a Red Cross tabard. Did I know what the Red Cross did? he smilingly asked me. Well, yes, I did know. Did I know that huge numbers of people in this country have problems? Well, yes. Did I know that the Red Cross helps people in crisis in this country, not just in faraway places? Actually, yes, I did. Did I also know that for as little as the price of a cup of coffee each day I could help? Yes, I knew that too. I also knew what was coming next. He was about to ask for my bank details so I could make a regular contribution. Yes! That was it!

Now, I always refuse to fill in donation forms on the street, or even on my doorstep for that matter. So I knew I was going to have to send him away disappointed. He even tried to soft-soap me by saying that he knew I could organise my donations online but that way he would lose his commission. That’s the way of the world. His tabard and ID card could well almost certainly genuine but I prefer to give my bank details in a safe way. Had he been collecting cash I would have made a donation. I know that a fraudster could work that scam as well, pocketing the cash for his own use, but it wouldn’t lead to the emptying of my account. We bandied our arguments back and forth in a friendly fashion for another five minutes or so but eventually I won. He went away, probably thinking I was a crazy, suspicious old biddy and I retreated indoors with my feelings of minor guilt. 

And I really dislike being put on the spot in that fashion. Maybe next time I’ll lie through my teeth and tell them I already contribute on a regular basis. After all, I do make a regular payment to Médecins sans Frontières and other such organisations. Grrrr!

Some time later I phoned our son. He was sitting in his garden enjoying a glass of wine in the warm but not too warm evening. The heat in his part of the country has been quite oppressive, he told me. He did get caught in a torrential downpour in central London the other day, he said, but mostly everything is very, very dry. And his journey home on the Metropolitan Lone has taken him past the occasional small fire, which is rather disturbing. No doubt he will find it all pleasantly green here when he visits at the end of the month - assuming nobody catches Covid in the interim, which has happened on the last two occasions that a visit has been planned. 

Satellite photos of England confirm how very dry much of the South and East of the country has become. This picture was taken on August 10th. Even though we are in the green bit of the country, I read that we had only 70% of our expected rainfall in July. Much of the South East has less that 10%. 

According to this article all sorts of things have been revealed below the water as rivers across Europe have dried to much reduced shadows of their normal selves: sunken boats, Roman forts and bridges, a nazi tank, that bomb in the Po in Italy. Perhaps the find that impressed me most was the “hunger stones” in the River Elbe, like the one near the northern Czech town of Děčín, close to the German border. “Wenn du mich siehst, dann weine” (“If you see me, then weep”), reads the grim inscription. It’s apparently one of dozens in central European rivers engraved to mark their levels during historic droughts – and warn future generations of the famine and hardship likely to follow each time they became visible. Some of the inscriptions go back hundreds of years. 

And of course, there are the drowned villages in reservoirs. I keep expecting to hear reports of the reappearance of villages from below Ladybower Reservoir, not too far from here. According to Wikipedia, “in 1976, 1995, and 2018, dry conditions caused the water level to drop and the village of Derwent to once again be exposed. In 2018, this caused unprecedented crowds to visit the rarely visible site. On 3 November 2018, a man had to be rescued by a mountain rescue team after getting stuck in extremely thick mud around the ruins of the village. On 17 November 2018 it was reported that the site had been vandalised by some of those visiting, with park rangers forced to stop visitors removing items from the site and with graffiti scrawled on some buildings.

We had rain in the night, or so the milkman tells me. Me, I slept through it.m

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!