Lights on at noon
The thundery weather continues for the next few days according to the forecasts. The cloud is thick and dark grey today, so we had breakfast at noon with the kitchen lights on (work ethic side note: coffee much earlier).
Outside in the yard: The daylight has that quality of diffuse sidelighting that makes whitewashed walls and pale yellow butterflies stand out strongly against the midtones. The thick dark grey clouds overhead reduce the normal diffuse daylight so that sidelighting becomes stronger. It looks wrong as the keylight is coming from the wrong direction so there is a feeling of something out of kilter.
The memory kicks in: tense lunch meals under lamps on rainy days. A sense of confinement in the house, and the darkness of the old back room. Tablecloth left on the table all morning and afternoon, also unusual. A sort of lassitude. The rest of the old house dark and quiet apart from the sound of the rain on the skylight on the upstairs landing - the landing was my spaceship and a stage sometimes.
These bouts of heavy cloud seldom last long and suddenly the light lifts, we sigh in relief and a point occurs where a decision is made to switch the lights off, experimentally at first, then confirmed later as the cloud lifts. The pause ends, and life and activity carry on. The tablecloth must be taken into the Kitchen folded so the crumbs don't fall on the carpet.