Hysteria electricita

There was a very unusual rather sickening light in the sky this evening. It looked like caramel. A storm was bubbling up, and the sun was battling with yellowy brown thunder clouds. There was a faint rainbow hovering over Brighton in the midst of a particularly angry patch of sky and as I approached London, the air was literally glowing with a blood-red post-apocalyptic sunset.

I thought it was hot in Worthing, but arriving in London and getting on the tube was hideous. I might as well have smeared myself in chip fat and thrown a bucket of used bath water onto my T-shirt.

It took me a long time to get to sleep last night, largely due to the mother of all electric storms, which crashed through Worthing in the early hours. It wasn't so much the thunder, which was almost permanently echoing and rumbling around the hills behind the town, but the lightning, which was like nothing I've ever seen in this country.  It was like some kind of strobe lighting display, coming from every conceivable direction, with flashes of fire every five seconds which lit the world up as bright as day.

I can only compare it to a lightning storm I witnessed in the South of France some twelve years ago, which destroyed the garden wall of the house I was staying in. I still remember the smell of static in the air, as lightning hit the ground less than three meters from where I was standing. And the abject fear I felt as the hairs on my arms all stood on end!

We finished up at PK's at somewhere approaching 8pm. I felt very proud of us both for completing everything, although it had, at times, been like pulling teeth. Two thirds of the way through the session we got slightly hysterical. One of the singers had obviously had the most dreadful time performing this particular movement and for a period of about thirty bars almost everything that we were listening to was out of tune, out of time, or, frankly, improvised!

I am wondering whether I'm more tired tonight than I have been in my entire life. The glands are still up and I feel like I've been repeatedly punched in the back. When I get home, Nathan has promised me a take away. I am ludicrously excited, although, even on the platform at Highgate tube station I can smell heavy rain, so it's possible we won't be able to leave the house!