Mrs Finnegan is Blown Away by Stormy Weather and her Own Verse (which is much Worse)

Are you troubled by wind?
The rain has lashed Brunswick Square* in recent days and the gales that followed tore tears from the eyes of young girls and DRIED the pavements before they were wet.

I knew it was coming of course. Any woman responsible for the household laundry will know the signs.

Cats walking with a straight tail pointing at the sky foretell that a gale is brewing while restless pigs will grunt loudly if wind is on the way. They can see it before we can feel it.
If you can HEAR distant bells ringing it is a warning the weather is changing. If the coals in the grate flare higher than usual and the day is DRY know it is (probably) safe to hang out the sheets.

But will it be dry? that is the question on every laundry maid’s lips.

Here are the sure INDOOR signs that reveal when it is about to rain:
salt, marble, iron and glass become moist;
wood starts to swell and doors are hard to open;
the flame in an oil lamp burns more brightly and
much soot falls down the chimney.

As for the OUTDOOR signs you best ask a countrywoman. There are many omens and most have to do with what some animals do not do (such as ravens not croaking in the morning) and what others do (cows, oxen, sheep and turkeys draw close to one another). As I cannot see any of those from Brunswick Square (with the exception of sheep but I have never been COMFORTABLE relying on them for anything) I am no expert.

The ONE infallible guide to the approach of rain is my corns hurting. Is that the same for you?

I confessed in my last missive that I was suffering from that lamentable condition suffered by MOST true artists – a blockage of afflatus** of such proportions that I could not ink word after word after word which is the most BASIC requirement of any writer.

I was NEAR to despair. And then your advice FLOODED in. Try something different you said, so I did.

An Elegy to September

Reach me a handkerchief, another yet,
And yet another, for the last is wet.

I weep for the loss of the month recently departed
Which should have lasted four sweet weeks, all of them good-hearted

But alas and alack, a mistake has been made
or else a thief has stolen in a midnight raid
Precious golden hours of harvest time
which in years previous were most sublime

For all the Septembers that I can bring to mind
None were as short as the one we have just left behind.

What do you think?

Am I ready to tackle a Horatian Ode or a Villanelle***?

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• New readers may be glad to know THAT I am a leading light in housekeeping circles and work at 13 Brunswick Square, otherwise known as The Regency Town House
• Afflatus definition: an impulse of creative power or inspiration (but you knew that already)
• A villanelle is a 16th century Italian style of poetry written in six three-line stanzas where the first line of the first stanza is used as a refrain to end the second and fourth stanzas and the last line of the first stanza is repeated as the last line of the third, fifth and sixth.
  I think I may have answered my own question…