The Winds of Change.

The wind has returned to the Coast.

The gales whip shimmering curtains of light across the turquoise water. Umbrellas are folded politely across the back of the deck chairs and bathers roast unfeelingly in the noon sun.

I love to watch the wispy veils of silver graze the surface of the placid sea. The boats, their weight lightened by the force of the air, twist and turn in unison.

The colours are intensified. I dream of painting our old wood-wormed furniture to match.

But it also means sweeping dirt, real DIRT from inside the house. Leaves from the gardens spangled with bougainvillea pink and purple, somehow make their way through the underside of closed doors. The terrace is swept clean but the stairs accumulate piles and piles of leaves. All doors, inside and out need to be fixed tightly to hooks or blocked with weights to prevent a deafening slam knocking the frames out of skewer. We fear for the glass in the fragile iron frames of the terrace windows. Replacing a pane in the rusty holdings, in this part of the world, in this part of the year, means begging.

Our young Jacaranda tree, already two stories high and permanently fixed to a pole, risks toppling over as we foolishly removed the other two poles that we had placed there against the winter Tramontana wind.

An old blanket and beach towel are taken overboard with the wind and lie in wait for retrieval in the abandoned gardens below the house for several days. When finally the gardener takes a ladder and brings them back up to our place, a tiny snake hidden in the blanket folds stays tight till the late afternoon, before slithering across the terrace head held high and slipping under the umbrella stand.

It takes a good deal of courage on my part to lift the stand and scare it off with a broom back into the abandoned gardens after it insists on staying put where it was.

I think I deserve a medal for that!

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