The river is a strong brown god – sullen, untamed and intractable

T S Eliot

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About a fortnight ago someone on Twitter was complaining about the amount of rain that had fallen and – foolishly, it now seems – I responded by saying that contrary to our undeserved reputation we’d had very little of the wet stuff in this part of Wales.

I should have known better. Within three hours the skies had darkened, the temperature had dropped and we were clearly In For It. After lashing it down for innumerable days the River Usk ran amok at Crickhowell for the second year in a row. But we were lucky. This wasn’t the type of catastrophe seen in some parts of the world, such as the typhoon that recently hammered Japan; nor was it one of those miserable events that occasionally affect areas of the UK. Nobody died or was injured (I think), there weren’t dozens of homes flooded (although the Bridgend Inn was awash and made the national news), and the event served to distract people from the dire political shenanigans being played out at Westminster.

The Usk is well known for this, as I pointed out a while ago in Earthshake. The waters rise very quickly, cause some havoc and then, just as quickly, subside again. By the following day things were almost back to normal. The sun was shining, 21st century traffic was abusing the 18th century stone bridge and jolly outdoorsy types were kayaking.

As much as I like to get out and do Interesting Things there are times when sitting on a comfy sofa appeal much more. The last few days have been grey and drizzly, Mr B is in the throes of a man-cold and there are no great demands on my time. When better than to prune and organize my overloaded Dropbox? I invariably end up with duplicates and unlabelled images, which is pretty annoying, though I’ve only myself to blame. Much worse is when I realize I’ve deleted pictures I really wanted to keep and I have to search through Samsung Cloud and various social media sites to restore the blessed things. Anyway, several sessions later I’m done and here are some that have escaped the cut or been rescued from oblivion.

Each October we celebrate Apple Day with a village party where people bring along their bushels of apples to be pressed into juice. Last October the weather was worthy of a day in mid summer

We’ll ignore the winter – that’ll be with us too soon. So, skipping over to spring…

August is the time for agricultural shows, large and small. From Brecon at the beginning of the month…

…to Llangynidr on a gorgeous August Bank Holiday weekend

August is also the month of the Greenman music festival, held at the nearby Glanusk Estate. This year Alex went with some friends, valiantly camping out even though there were comfy beds and hot showers (to say nothing of home cooking!) with us, a mere twenty minute walk away..

September means Abergavenny Food Festival, an event we never miss. It goes from strength to strength and is a great opportunity to catch up with friends and enjoy some deliciousness!

The weather was still lovely even a month ago, when we walked along the river to the rugby field to support the local team:

And just before last weekend’s floods we were treated to this:

Now that I’ve set fingers to keyboard again after a bit of a break I hope I can keep on top of things…the Rugby World Cup has finished so I’m not glued to the TV. There’s quite a bit to look forward to, with our alternative Christmas coming up at the end of the month, but more of that later. For now it just remains for me to stop the automatic upload of images to Dropbox from my phone!

PS – it’s raining again…

The system is that there is no system

Steve Jobs