The Gallery: before & after the storm…

The prompt for Week 35 of the Gallery at Sticky Fingers is ‘Before & After’. It wasn’t an easy one for me – my children are now teenagers and have moved through so many stages that I can’t choose from the myriad photos I have of them in albums, drawers, the loft and on the PC. I haven’t recently had a makeover or done any decorating. There was also the added issue of being asked to take a new photo especially for the prompt, and my family are hopeless at being obliging in that respect.

So having seen the devastation in Cornwall today, and having experienced high winds and torrential downpours here in Somerset I thought a trip out to one of my favourite spots – the Wellington Monument high on the Blackdown Hills – was in order. We were there just three weeks ago, when I took the first of these two shots on my SLR. The second one, taken from more or  less the same place, is what it looks like now and is taken with the phone on my camera.  Three and a bit weeks and about 10 inches of rain and gale force winds have turned a picture of what could almost be late summer into one that is not even a season of mists or mellow fruitfulness anymore.

It is so beautiful, but the weather that has made it this stunning has caused such a lot of problems to so many people in the SW and elsewhere. To anyone who has just had gallons of water and muck sloosh into their homes and now has to face Christmas living in digs this won’t be much help I am sure, but I am willing it to stop raining….