Yesterday I said to No. 1 son, perhaps he could take a rake from the garden cupboard and gather the leaves together that had fallen onto the lawn. He was ready and willing, but I forgot to remind him in the afternoon and he forgot I asked, so the leaves were still there this morning. This morning we have one of those windy days, a vigorous wind even vigourous with an extra “u”. My son must have had a sixth sense. Where there was yesterday just a splattering of leaves, today there was almost a carpet and as the speed of our famous bise Swiss wind gathers, there will be more to come. The remainders of Autumn will no longer be on the trees, but on the ground.

The Swiss bise is even mentioned in Internet a being “a cold, dry wind from northeast which blows through the Swiss Midland caused by canalisation of the air-current along the northern edge of the Alps, during high-pressure conditions in northern or eastern Europe respectively”.  Not my original words, but the personification of a vigourous climate. I live in the Swiss midland at the foot of the Jura mountains, this midland stretching down to the alps, so there will be no escaping it, we have the perfect wind channel. Our weather prophets have predicted that it will gain in speed and is accompanied by low cold temperatures: at least the sun is shining.

Mr. Swiss does not like the bise, because he is prone to the aches and pains which it can cause. He also does not like our warm Foehn wind which is a type of dry, warm, down-slope wind that occurs in the lee ( downwind side) of Switzerland and a few other European countries, as this can cause nearvous aches and pains, so there is no escaping from weather symptoms in Switzerland. Last week was a Foehn week, according to Mr. Swiss and this week is a Bise week, also according to Mr. Swiss, so Switzerland is not a country for people prone to weather influences.

In England, where I grew up, we had continuous rain, but no side effects. It just annoyed you everything being wet all the time. I have no problem with this bise or foehn, I do not even notice when it arrives. We Brit are made of tough stuff. I just have problems with growing old and my joints no longer wanting to co-operate, vigour has become a foreign word in my vocabulary. It is either a windy day or a warm day. We British did not have names for our weather situations, because it was known as  english weather.

I just wrote a birthday card for my english friend and soulmate in England. She is 4 days older than me, and for the first and only time it is a card with the figure 70 on the front. I still have contact with a few friends from my school days and this year we have all approached the same age and are congratulating each other on Facebook. It is a funny feeling really. We began school together in our 11th year, some a few years earlier and now we are a bunch of golden oldies with grey hair (deep down at the roots for some of us) thinking about how to leave our beds in the morning without problems.  The vigourous age is now long gone, we are now looking foward to the golden age of antiquity, but at least antiques have a high value.

And now to polish my walking cane and clean my glasses, and do not forget to take your daily tablets. Yes the vigotous days are gone, but there is always something to look foward to. If I was still in england, I would receive a telegramme for my 100th birthday from the queen – what an inspiration.

Daily Prompt: Vigor/vigour no matter how, you still need it