Two nights ago, I sat in the courtyard during one of the most impressive electric storms I ever witnessed. Clouds chased each other in the sky, the roll of thunder echoed over our village, and flashes of light made the countryside and the deserted streets of Castelnuovo Belbo look like a Hammer movie set.
I was half-expecting to see a carriage drive up the lane, carrying Peter Cushing or, with a little luck, Ingrid Pitt.

Instead the night only brought a drop in temperatures, from 40°C to a much more manageable 18°C.

And last night it was the same, only this time all the dials were turned up to 11. Trees were uprooted, houses damaged, and under cover of the storm, a gang of burglars burglarized a pharmacy in a nearby village.
And here, the wind just ripped away a skylight from our rooftop.

This led to a night of fiery cursing and adventure, as we tried to put the pieces together, and find a way to stop the pouring rain to flood our attic.
In the end, we were able to patch the skylight together with a liberal amount of Duct Tape, so that it will stay in place and it won’t let the rain in in the foreseeable future. The night was also an opportunity to realize once again that the people that refurbished our house over thirty years ago worked really bad, and on the cheap.

My brother had to put on some old tracksuit, working gloves and a hat to go in he attic and find a way to assess the damage – working with a torchlight that died the moment he was upstairs. Then we had to fight back the pigeons that were trying to find refuge under our rooftop.
And so on, and so forth.
Now our August is officially started. We wonder what it will bring next.