Gales of laughter and a real gale

from w
This morning the sky was a peuce colour, like I'd seen it the day of a bushfire - yellowy brown and the wind was coming up as I went up to the church hall for a morning coffee with a group of about fifty women. Our guest speaker, Enid Baker, had us in gales of laughter with her stories and extended jokes, some oldies nearly falling of their seats. Laughter is a great medicine. Coffee and cakes were excellent too as the wind bashed against the windows and walls outside.

After some computer stuff I had to do in the church office, I caught a bus and it was gale-force by then and as I waited for a bus I did a kind of Marilyn Monroe pose. At the ATM my money almost flew into the traffic but I grabbed it in time and paid the car insurance. The trees and the traffic light signs were really shaking.

On the bus home I noticed trees down and some fences in tatters, and when acouple of us got off the bus, sand and grit whipped us in the face. Then, what a shamozzle I found our back yard to be. The dead branches from the date palm were scattered about, the pots and pot plants all over the yard, a small tree was down on the ground, two unattached doors were wrecked with glass shattered. And yesterday Peceli had been so proud of a neat, tidied up compound! They say the winds were up to 150 k an hour at times so it was almost like a hurricane.