Tonight no one sleeps
This week: Monograph № 4; The night when the village doesn’t sleep;
This blog is a week late, because of the technical problems I have had with my website.
After a lot of work this week, I think (fingers crossed) I have now resolved the problems. The next Blog will be out later than usual, on Sunday…
o0o
The baking hot weather continues unabated.
There has been some cloud early and late, however the daytime temperature has still exceeded 35°C every day and the nights continue to be unpleasantly warm and humid.
On Thursday morning, I was working in my study and heard the distant rumble of thunder. Looking on Blitzortung, there was a thunderstorm over Brač which was tracking towards Otok Hvar.
As I looked there was a brilliant bolt of Fork Lightning, which even some distance away, frightened the feline dozing on the windowsill, making her bolt for cover under the table.
After several more intense lightning strikes to the east, the rain started. Coming in pulses, we eventually received 6.8mm / 6.8 litres per metre² of much needed rain.
The storm was fast moving and as it cleared away, there was the unmistakable sound of a Canadair water bomber and an Air Tractor. Although I couldn’t see any smoke, a quick check of the radar showed they were working a forest fire about 5km away, above Pitve.
Later I had it confirmed that multiple lightning strikes were believed to have started the fires.
The problem is that with no appreciable rain for two months and extreme temperatures, everything is bone dry.
I am still up early every morning to irrigate before the sun becomes too hot. This does mean that this week, I have seen some spectacular sunrises, something most people on the island will have missed completely.
During the week I joined friends for a breakfast buffet at Milna, on the south coast of the island.
What could be more enjoyable than a waterfront breakfast, in good company, with surroundings like this?
I continue to fight the weeds. On a Mediterranean gardening group, there was comment this week about the scourge of Fennel. I have it too
The plant has huge thick roots which need a mini digger to effectively remove. It readily sets seeds and for me, I find the taste of the herb too strong for my liking.
At the other end of the day, there have been lovely sunsets too. I snapped this through the mosquito mesh on my study window.
Monograph № 4
When it is too hot to work outside, that doesn’t mean that I have a day-long siesta! I wish…
I have been spending a lot of time in front of my study window, where even on the hottest days there is a cooling breeze, working on the computer.
Much of my work has been research of one kind or another, but this week it has been about street furniture.
More years ago than I care to remember, I saved a police signal pillar, the last one of its kind, which had been knocked over by a truck. This is now on permanent display in the entrance to the Humberside Police communications centre at Melton.
The recent freeing from copyright of very large scale 1:1250 Ordnance Survey maps has meant that it is is now possible to view these maps on line and identify exactly where street furniture was.
Just as there are aficionados of old post boxes, so there are collectors of police boxes. One is for sale at the moment for a cool £24,000. I’ll take two – not!
Before the days of personal radios, decades before mobile phones, communication with policemen was with pillars and the “Dr Who” police boxes.
These pieces of street furniture were once in every city and large town in the country and were exported to colonial forces around the world. Even “Dr Who” police boxes finished up in far flung places, like Hong Kong.
This week I have finished another Monograph, this one about the 14 Bridlington police pillars and the single police box. If you are interested in reading about the secret life of police pillars, click on this link to download the pdf .
The research is laborious and time consuming, with in the case of Bridlington, 36 separate map tiles, often in two or three iterations to be examined, looking for a single black spot and identifier letters.
I have another much larger Monograph in preparation. So even on these baking hot days, it can be quite pleasant working in front of an open window!
The night when the village doesn’t sleep
At the start of August each year, we have the Puhijada festival in the village.
Our Puh are the edible dormice, brought to the island as an delicacy by the Romans, two millennia ago.
They still roam the woods and I occasionally see one at dusk. More often I see where they have been, because they leave the evidence of their midnight feasts on my pomegranate fruits.
In most of Europe towns and villages have an annual festival, often tied to the Patron Saint, farming or something like the Puh of Dol
This week the village association, called Tartajun, have been running activities for children, an art show in the Church and the Balota challenge.
Tonight is the culmination. The sound stage has been set up and while I was writing the blog, they have been testing the loud speakers. I am three hundred metres away but can attest to them working perfectly.
This is the only festival celebrating the Puh in Europe, so is quite famous in that respect.
Everything is ready for the arrival of the visitors, who will begin to trickle in from 18:00
The music will begin around nine and continues until two or three in the morning.
It is the one night in the year when no one in the village sleeps.
So tomorrow, Sunday, I just might not be up as early as usual to irrigate – or I may just not bother going to bed…. NCG