Views from Everywhere: What are the chances?

Tuesday, December 2, 2014

What are the chances?

I have known my housemate for some 20 years now so it was not unusual when ten years ago she was

Looking for a place to stay on her visits back to Geneva that I offer her a room here in my home. I then

started visiting her in her other home in Southern France and many of her friends there became also my friends. It has been about 3 weeks since I last blogged – the death of Barbara somehow stopped me for awhile.

But this past week saw unusual events both here at home and in her village.

Argelès was hit hard by the wet weather and flooding – probably the first time in decades that it made the national and perhaps even international news. At the same time here in my village we had a gas leak where they are currently working on the underground pipes – one which when it burned took out all the other surrounding pipes. For four days there was no telephone nor internet as far away as a couple of kilometers as everything melted in the 1200°C heat.

Both villages are somewhat back to normal, although I have to still go way out of my way to reach the center of the village by car and one of our friends in her village lost her car – shoved over a wall by the water – whilst several others had their ground floors flooded.

What are the chances that in two separate places there would be two separate natural catastrophes within days of each other?

Hopefully we are both good for another few decades.