After the storm

A FURIOUS summer storm swept through Norfolk tonight. It was the kind that leaves a pack of Brownies screaming as the electricity fails - step forward my eldest and two dozen of her excitable mates.
But as the rain rumbled eastwards the setting sun reappeared in the west, leaving the countryside around Loddon bathed in a warm evening night. I headed up to Langley and then chased the sunset through the back roads of Claxton and Carleton St Peter - familiar enough territory for those who have done the Wherryman's Way circular walks. For a while it seemed impossible to take a bad photo - everything was in super-focus and rainbows kept appearing behind me. Reaching back twenty-five years into my A-level English Lit course I seem to remember poet Gerard Manley Hopkins calling it "blade light". That felt about right tonight. The other difference was an almost complete absence of birdsong. Perhaps they get scared - much like the Loddon Brownies.