Toffee doesn't do thunder

 It never rains but it pours. 

You want to see that old chestnut verified? Come to the charming Spanish province of Valencia. Where we live.

Just a week ago, we were out hiking through the rice-growing area of the Albufera. It was shirt-sleeve weather. Practically sun-block conditions. Which we’re still not used to in late November, up here in the northern Hemisphere, when you’d expect grey skies and biting cold at this time of year.

Shirtsleeve weather in the Albufera less than a week ago

Well, that’s the Valencia region for you. The weather tends to be wonderful. If you like your weather generally dry and warm.

The Valencia region: green despite the warmth

The trouble is that the region is also surprisingly green for a place quite that warm and dry. So, you’ll have no trouble deducing, it must get watered from time to time. And, since it’s dry for so long, when the rain comes down, it has to come down hard. Hard, and for hours. Which is what it’s been doing since this morning, as I write these words.

Not raining but pouring
The view from our front door this morning

I suppose I prefer having heavy rain from time to time with lots of great weather in between, than interminable drizzle three or four times a week. But while the storm’s on, it’s sometimes difficult to remember that I prefer it that way. 

Especially as it really is a storm. Accompanied, as it generally is, by lightning and thunder, the latter often extremely loud. Valencia is the city whose main festival, the Fallas, is principally concerned, as far as I can tell, with letting off tons of firecrackers. That would be irritating enough if it were only the usual small things most of us think of as firecrackers, but the diabolical Fallas-fans have come up with a type of firecracker which is about the size and shape of a stick of dynamite. Obviously, it doesn’t create the explosion of a stick of dynamite, but the noise it makes compares to an ordinary firecracker a bit like heavy artillery compares to a child’s cap gun.

So maybe I shouldn’t be particularly surprised by the noise of Valencian thunder.

Not that we particularly worry about it. Sadly, however, we have one member of the household who has lately become extremely sensitive to it. I don’t know why. Her pal takes it all in her stride, and she used to too. But not recently.

I first noticed her change in feeling to such loud noise when I was out for a walk with her the other day. There was a sound of shotguns being fired, quite a long way off, but even that startled her. She was in the middle of what we euphemistically refer to as “her business” when this happened, and she stopped dead. She took a look at me to see how I’d reacted, so I composed my expression into one of complete tranquillity, and my posture into utter indifference, as I’ve been trained to do, and that seemed to reassure her a little. 

She found herself another spot to carry on with her business.

You’ll have guessed by this point that I’m not talking about a human. No, this is Toffee, our toffee-coloured toy poodle. She’s been in a bad way today, as the thunder thunders around the place. While her friend, the black poodle Luci, just takes it all in her stride.

At one point, she started to dart upstairs, perhaps thinking that in a bedroom, generally a safe place in her view of the world, she would be in a refuge from the noise. But then she realised that she was going to be on her own up there, and solitude in such conditions was just not to be borne. So she sat on a stair trembling. And looking at us pitifully.

After all, she’s a very little dog.

Toffee, not happy about the thunder
Please make it stop...

I had to pick her up and take her downstairs. I sat down in her favourite place, the living room couch, and took her on my lap. As an afterthought, I wrapped her in a blanket. She seemed pleased with this arrangement. And, I’m glad to say, she soon stopped trembling.

Comforted at last

Ah, well. It’ll be over soon. The fine weather will return. Perhaps not quite shirtsleeve weather for a couple of months now. But at least withtout the rain and, above all, without the thunder.

Toffee will feel a lot better for that.