The forecast was atrocious (both in terms of weather and accuracy), but very educational. They predicted cloud, rain, then storms, with possible tornados and the odd ‘mànega’, which I have now learned is a funnel cloud. Later still there would be rain with ‘fang’, which literally means mud. We were a bit stumped by what this could mean, until I asked my multilingual mum who explained that it was Sahara dust that was being sucked up and blown over, which the Catalans term ‘it’s raining mud’. In the event it didn’t rain a drop during the day and there were patches of blue sky throughout the daylight hours. Marc would have gone flying if others had been out, but we expected it to get worse at any time, so didn’t even bother considering flying/walking/cycling. Bloody forecasters!

So we worked some more on the conferences, LMSC stuff and prep for the next webcast. We had lovely dinner at Marc and Isabel’s and met their new son Sergi, who is gorgeous.

The drink driving laws have been tightened up here and since there are millions of different police forces you have to be careful. Geoff had never been breathalysed in 40 years of driving until he was twice here last winter. As we were driving home last night I commented that I had only seen road blocks when it was dry and you didn’t see many Mossos (the Catalan police force) standing around in the rain at night. Two minutes later… we hit a road block. Luckily, the person waving people through was a paragliding friend of ours who cheered us on with a hearty “Adéu, Geoff!”. So much for my daft theories.

At night the spectacular thunderstorms arrived. Some of the thunder claps actually shook the house and I worried that the washing might be blown away on the terrace.

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