"Tra-la-la-la-la"

Casa Cristina, Roandola

"Now is the month of May" - so goes the madrigal, as far as I remember.  Apparently it's going to be a sunny 30º in Romania today, according to Laurie Webb who runs a B&B in Transylvania, called Casa Cristina. Sounds an attractive proposition to me at the moment, assuming you can face crawling through the airport immigration controls on your return - I suspect the flights go from Luton and Gatwick, to be fair. Anyway after quite a bright day yesterday, when I sat in the conservatory and Jane hung out two loads of washing (she's a canny lady!), we woke up this morning to rain belting down. I gather I slept through a whopper of a thunderstorm in the night.

It was raining too at dawn in Oxford as the choristers sang in May morning from the top of Magdalen College Chapel tower. The rain clearly dampened the enthusiasm at ground level of the usual inebriated (and sober) revellers - as, compared to last year's 18,000, the estimate for this year was between 3,000 and 6,000. Perhaps, thinking about it, the sober ones stayed in their beds, and just the inebriates took to the streets. Fortunately none of them was drunk enough or stupid enough to jump off Magdalen Bridge into the swollen and fast-flowing water of the River Cherwell.

I love this picture taken at the weekend by Luke Leary
and posted on Facebook.

I remain grateful for the continuing rainfall. Well, I can afford to, I suppose, as I just stay indoors when it's pouring. I am sorry, though, about Badminton Horse Trials being cancelled, as a very important, in my eyes, and lovely young lady was planning to go on Sunday. I was interested to hear the weathermen and the Environment Agency spokesman yesterday categorically declaring that although we've had the wettest April on record and although there were 120+ flood warnings out it would be having "absolutely no impact" on the deep water reserves from which we draw a lot of our water. None? Absolutely none? Perhaps by the evening they'd realised that no one quite believed them, as they'd changed their tune to "while the downpours help tackle the drought in many of the areas now suffering flooding, much more rain is needed in the coming months to fully (sic) replenish supplies". That sounded a bit more honest and consequently believable.