Thunder!

Wow! How exciting was the storm this afternoon?! As I walked home from the bus stop the black clouds were gathering, literally following me as i walked down the road, quickening my pace, the tension building. Kids leaving the primary school stopped to stare and point into the sky behind me - it was like being in a thriller film (except that they were only pointing at the lightning, rather than alien spaceships or an approaching meteor)! Once home i dashed out into the back garden to take in the laundry on the line, and i just stood there for a minute in the wind and the rain and the thunder; it was awesome! Soon after returning to the shelter of the kitchen, my mother and I watched as all of a sudden the wind picked up and torrents of rain and huge fat hailstones absolutely lashed down as the thunder roared all around. It just took my breath away! It only lasted a minute or so but it was uttely awesome - there I something really wild and a bit exotic, I think, about thunderstorms. I suppose I always relate them back to my days in Singapore, whose great-big-roaring-lion thunderstorms make ours sound like the mews of little kittens, but nevertheless my memories of these have imbued all storms with a sense of the tropical. Our garden did look particularly rainforest-like afterwards :)