Today started as any Monday morning… with a groan. I rolled out of bed, wandered into the kitchen and started to boil the kettle for a nice cup of tea. Just as I plugged the kettle in, a bolt of lightning and a crack of thunder shot across the sky. Mmm that was close, I told Mrs Sensible.
As I wandered into the bathroom, two more bolts of lightning lit up the bathroom and then the winds came. There is a Latin name for the winds that suddenly appear in Piedmont something like bigggusti flatulantisti windusti. A strange howling sound came from the chimney, it sounded like a Scotsman struggling with a very bad set of bagpipes, Mrs Sensible and I looked at each other with horror, as we watched the lounge ceiling start to vibrate. As we stood watching, the ceiling cracked where it was supposed to be glued to the wall and lifted about 10 centimetres. That’s about 4 inches in real money.
As designed by Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown and redesigned by a bit of wind. For you dedicated gardeners, can you spot my lemon tree?
We both, in a very calm British stiff upper lip way, decided that we should vacate the lounge and close the windows. The conversation and actions went something like this.
“What is the noise?”
“Don’t know”
“The roof is moving”
“What?”
“Look, it is moving.”
“Move, run, now”
“The windows”
“Close them, oh Dio!”
We calmly walked ran around the house like headless chickens, shutting the windows as the wind blew and the mad Scotsman in the chimney played his bagpipes.
A strange sound came from the chimney. Was it Father Christmas, a mouse or a strange Scotsman with his bagpipes.
The crazy man who converted, what should have been a lovely 1800’s barn conversion into a modern American style office building house, installed swinging windows that are 1.5 metres square (Five feet in English). When the wind grabs them then can spin 180 degrees and smash into little pieces.
This photo does NOT do these stupid windows justice.
In Italy, we have a small problem that blights the country; now some of you will be thinking of the mafia and some of you might be thinking of the glorious Italian bureaucracy, however the real problem is the blasted mosquitoes. A ‘proper’ Italian house, designed and built by anyone with an IQ above 25 makes sure that it is easy to install anti mosquito nets. Unfortunately because a moron designed this house, it took me 12 months to devise a way of attaching nets to our huge, swinging windows. The end result took over 80 metres of gaffa tape (for you non-English blog readers, gaffa tape is like sellotape, but wide and very sticky, it has the remarkable property of sticking eyebrows to lips and fingers to windows) 10 packs of netting and a lot of swearing. The end result is mosquito nets, which hang from the windows, the same way my old grannies knickers used to hang from the washing line.
Big and baggy, just like grannies knickers
They nets do stop 97.5 % of all known mosquitoes, the remaining 2.5% still manage to get in and bite me at around two o’ clock in the morning; but because of the masses of gaffa tape needed to secure the mesh, the windows no longer close properly. Now this is not normally a problem, except the wind was blowing a hooley and the rain was raining horizontally!! We stood and watched as the rooms slowly flooded. I ran around in circles while my wife ran for the mop and some mats to soak up the water.
When the wind and the rain stopped, we surveyed the devastation. Apart from the three new ponds in the bedrooms, the destroyed shed, various roofs that had detached themselves from the chicken shed etc.; what most upset Mrs Sensible was she and to a lesser extent I, had spent the previous couple of days cleaning and tidying the house ready for our visitors.
I will huff and puff and blow your shed away.
We checked to make sure Luagina, our neighbour had survived the storm and then we started the clean up operation, so that we would be ready for our visitors arriving from the UK. Hopefully bearing gifts like piccalilli and HP brown sauce.
Englishman in Italy 
Wow, that’s some devastation. I hope you managed to clear it up and there wasn’t too much damage to the house.
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Hi Sarah, We have some very interesting cracks in the lounge ceiling, the lemons fell off my tree and the tin shed is doomed. But as Luigina, our neighbour said “we are all alive”
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Agh! I’ve had the thrilling experience of the wind shattering one of those spin-y windows.
Best of luck!
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We have been lucky and caught them before they smash… but it was a very close thing this time
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My visitors have just gone back to the UK, leaving m,e with 2 litres of HP sauce, 3 bottles of Roses lime cordial and a box of good old Bisto
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2 litres of HP sauce, wow. Tell them they can stay over here next time. Bisto is good and OXO cubes.
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Bless your hearts! Sending soothing, peace, ease and flow!!
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Thanks we need it.
I went chasing through the vineyard looking for a bed sheet that I thought had blow away. It seems it was never washed and that is why I couldn’t find it.
Oh the alzheimer’s is kicking in..
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Glad you and Mrs Sensible were unharmed. They had windows like that in my mother’s “retirement flat” block and all the elderly people got caught up in them trying to retrieve their tangled curtains on windy days.
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I nearly fell out of one of them as I was trying to stick the netting to the frame. maybe I need to upload a post about it.
PS I hope your mother is enjoying her retirement.
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Sounds terrifying while it was happening….glad everybody is alright. was it a tornado?
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I have no idea, the temperature dropped from 36°c to 24°c in seconds, and then the rain was raining horizontally. It was so bad you couldn’t see the garden for all the rain and water.
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I’m glad you are okay, was there any damage to the roof of your house? Your windows are very interesting, and look dangerous but I like how you devised your screens. 🙂 Enjoy your company and hopefully this is the last of storms like that for you.
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Hi,
I think we will be due one or two more storms before the summer is out. I just hope we don’t get any of the mega hail storms, because they make a mess of the car.
We lost a ridge tile from the roof. The main damage was the lounge ceiling and the loss of the tin shed.
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Wow, that sounds intense, is your place structurally sound after the movign roof incident?
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Hi, yes it is ok. The wind blew under the roof tiles and sucked the plaster board of the ceiling up. Hence the vibrating and huge crack. Good fun though
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I hope if I’m ever in an extreme situation like that, you’re not there. The sight of you running around flapping would render me incapable of doing anything constructive!!! 🙂 Glad you’re both ok though!
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When you are in a panic and not sure what to do, try running around in circles… It works for me.
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Just as well you married Mrs Sensible and not Mrs Flappy 😉
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Now there is a thought. 😉
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🙂
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Cripes, that was some storm! I hope that the ceiling has been sorted and that you’ve got over the shock. Did the sausage-dog get blown away??? Your grandmother had impressive knickers, if your mosquito nets are anything to go by 🙂
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Granny had very impressive knickers 🙂 Gilda the short legged but incredibly fat sausage dog was hiding in the cantina, probably looking for something to eat. I am still in shock, will someone please pass me a glass of grappa!
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That must have been very scary. What a shame about the shed. Is it Murphy’s Law that dictates that if there’s a bad time for a storm to happen (ie just when you have spent ages preparing for visitors) then that’s just when it will happen?
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Would you believe the shed blew down about a month ago.. It was rebuilt a little smaller with the pieces that didn’t blow away into the next village. At the rate we are going, we might manage to make a dog house out of it. 🙂
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Great windows if only the skeeters could not get in at all. That indeed was a pretty bad wind at your place. I’m glad that your house did not suffer any more harm- could have been much worse.
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Skeeters… I will google it.
It could have been a worse, I might have been out for a run at the time. Seriously one minute it was fine, the next minute it was complete mayhem.
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Skeeters = mosquitoes. Or mozzies or what ever you want to call tjhem. Annoying little bas—–ds!
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Got it.. skeeters, i like that
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glad you guys are okay, recruit your visitors to help )
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Would you believe we have another storm this morning? With the amount of rain that is falling I think I need to start on the Ark project.
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ah, and what an interesting blog story that would be. stay dry and hold your pets close ) beth
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Hi Beth,
Not sure Mrs Sensible will let me build an Ark, she lets me follow most of my dreams and scatty plans, but an Ark might be too big. 🙂
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You’re gonna find me…..hey out in the Country!
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# I might sing along with you #
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Ba baba ba ba…..
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I’ll maim that tune in….
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You’ve heard me singing then
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Wow, that’s an exciting start to the week… I can just imagine you running around in circles panicking, I’m pretty sure that’s what I’d do in that situation too!
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Did the wind, rain and destruction hit the Langhe?
In Casale they had hail the size of apples !!!
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We’ve had a couple of big storms, no hail or destruction here though thankfully, just lots of rain and some impressive lightning. I hear there have been a few tornadoes around too.
Rather spookily, just as I sent that message yesterday the sky darkened, a gust of wind blew the shutters to and then there was a huge crack of thunder and the heavens opened.
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It is nice and calm here at the moment and the temp is about 23°C
I really enjoy watching the lightning storms, they are pretty impressive. Around here we have lots of cars full of dents, caused by the hail….
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“Run!” Sheesh. Glad to hear you’re both okay….because that just sounds crazy. I also recently concocted screens for bugs too. (un)Crafty bunch we are!
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Upload a pic of your screens, then we can see if they look like my grannies knickers.
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I made mine with an uglier black mesh and velcrow! except that I pulled it taught – which doesn’t show up well in photos 😦 ….I was so excited the day I made them, so I took pics to send to J at work and he replied with a ‘I’m sure they look great in person!’ grr
we planned our road trip down to Croatia and we tried to get closer to your area, but Verona was as close as we could get
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I can’t pull the mesh tight because the window swings out when it is open. When the window is open, almost 1/2 a metre of window is in the room and the other 1/2 is outside. So the mesh needs to fit when the window is open, and be able to stretch when we try to close the window.
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the belgians didn’t get that fancy.
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I wish the Italians hadn’t
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Glad you all survived in one piece even if the shed and your lounge roof didn’t! Glad too that Gilda managed to lie low! 😉 Very inventive with the gaffa tape and netting I must say and wow what a lovely view you have from your window! 🙂
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Hi, thanks, we did survive and so did Gilda. We do have a great view across the vineyards, although the wind likes to come barrelling down the valley.
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That sucks. Glad to hear you and Mrs Sensible weren’t hurt though.
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Thanks Mrs Gillies,
We were just shaken and stirred, much like a good cocktail
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brilliant post…I literally laughed outloud!!! So glad I found your site; I can hardly wait to read more….
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I am glad you found us and more importantly, it made you laugh 🙂
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