control, an illusion

Life is unpredictable. Just when you think you’ve got a grip on how to endure its fickle moods it decides to remind you what a beast it can be.

Often, it just has to gesture to Nature to pull up alongside you in its blundering tank, and direct it right across your path.

This rather picturesque scene is not a lake, but one of the main access roads to my house – thoroughly flooded. A code red storm tore through Ireland just after Christmas, and dumped a tremendous amount of rain upon already saturated land.

Nature, being its usual contrary self, then offered up a little temporary sunshine and preened over its act: isn’t it pretty? Well, as long as you don’t plan on driving through it…

Humans have very little say when Nature decides to run amok – as it did again last night in Ireland, when hurricane-strength winds whipped water across towns and countryside with complete disregard for our well-being or desire for a dry home.

Lying in bed, trying to sleep, while booming gusts shake the house, is a fearful reminder of how powerless we are during Nature’s skirmishes.

We can only lie behind our flimsy shields, and hope it thunders past, to fix its baleful gaze upon another target.