DOWNPOUR WITH A MESSAGE

On the possibly  slim chance that pageviews repeatedly  registered over the past few weeks as coming from Russia, the UK, the US, the Ukraine, etc, actually mean that people are trying to read Collievänner and then probably have to depend on Google translate:
 If you´re there and trying to follow us, please don´t bother with the translation services on the Internet. We´ve just tested them. And while one of us certainly is a lousy poet, we´re not as bad as that - hopefully. We do sometimes write stuff that some dog world people find unpalatable, or disagree with, but we´re not half as outlandish as the translated texts have it. Sometimes they just are nonsensical, but sometimes the meaning is not just lost,  it´s changed.

So, if you see something in Swedish here which you think might interest you, send us an email asking for a translation! Time permitting, we´ll give you one. Here, for starters, is our English version of STORT REGN.
The Google translate is a rather different story. :-)

DOWNPOUR

The Institute of Meteorology was wrong again, on both its predictions. The wind did not turn into a proper gale and the rain did not stop at 35 mm.
The downpour hit the 50 mm notch several hours ago and keeps on coming. That constant background rumble outside is not the wind, which is actually content with just snatching and tugging at the trees. The sound is coming from the dome grid of the well by the garden gate, where water from the overflowing ditch forces its way down. I run out to collect the mail and stop dead - what a strange buzzing! Angry bumble bee? Hornet? But there is no other anger here than that of the metal dome over the well; what I hear is the sound of water swirling iron into vibration.

Some seven years ago, we had 100 mm come down on us in just over one day. Timid little streams transformed into something else: roared and and snatched away bits of the roads. Trees had their footing washed away, toppled and fell and you had to pay attention to movement in forest slopes, when walking with the dogs. I was baffled by a strange howling noise from a pasture, too monotonous and mechanical to be coming from distressed cattle, so what? The sound of angry water. The noise of the pressure bearing down on the bottom of a drain well, forcing the water accellerating its rotation in that narrow cylinder to spout back up into the air!
Lightning strikes two hundred meters away. First, a huge hissing everywhere, not the loudest sound I have heard - the loudest came right after and made me deaf - but surely the largest. It took a while before I could think again and realize that hair cells can capture the sound of billions of electrons in motion. Is there a sound to the speed of light?
Yeah, gosh! Right!




Yep, living in the countryside can be a list of incoveniences. The lightning and the force field around it took out the computer and the electric fence and put a neighbour´s phone on fire. At least, ours passed away quietly - but it took some time and more money to get everything back up and running. Makes you not take things for granted. Every now and then, you have to do things like get outside in a hurry with a shovel and clear the inflow into the drain well, with rain water trickling down your back. Still, this is the place where your physical senses relay reality to you. There´s too much going on all the time in the cities; they crowd your awareness away.
The world is magical. It is made up of physics and biology, and so it is magical. If you don`t believe me, ask the nearest giraffe what their blood pressure is. Ask trees which genes they have in common with us. Ask any orthopedic surgeon why the human spine resembles the letter S!
Or ask the dog how it happened that he transformed himself to live in partnership with a madcap species like ours. 

Bodil Carlsson


PS Pics have nothing to do with this post. This is what it´s like sometimes when there´s not a downpour. Dogs make a life good.