I’m currently ghostwriting a book for a couple in Canada, and every Saturday morning we have a two-hour Zoom call when I interview them about their stories for the book.

This morning, as always, the adventure they were telling me about was exciting and I was living it vicariously through them. But then I had an adventure of sorts myself. This morning dawned sunny and hot, with clear blue skies. I went for my early morning walk, ate breakfast outside and walked home. All good.

As always, before the interview I set my table up in front of the window so that I would get good natural light for the video, and we started our meeting. All was well for about the first hour, and then, as often happens in Argentine summer, the sky darkened very suddenly and very quickly. Then the rain came on. And then the wind came up, and the palm tree outside my balcony began to waffle about. Then it started to thunder.

My image on the screen was becoming so dark you could hardly seem me. At one point, my client said, “Helen, are you still there? Can you hear us?” I assured him I was, and told him just to keep talking!

I think I’ve mentioned that there are a lot of pigeons across from my apartment, and there’s currently a mourning dove sitting on eggs on my bedroom window ledge. I can put up with that, but they all seem to have taken this as a sign that a party is going on, and my balcony sometimes look like a pigeon convention until I shoo them away.

I could see them all starting to gather on the balcony for shelter, and at first I ignored them because I didn’t want to interrupt. But I was so distracted I had to tell them, and we took a short break from the interview while I chased off these birds!

The Argentine word for a thunderstorm is tormenta, which I think you’ll agree is very descriptive!

Anyway, before we finished our call the sky had lightened considerably and they could see me again by the time we finished! But the tormenta isn’t over, although it’s not so dark now. I think it’s on for the day — although they often stop just as suddenly as they begin.

I’m going to a local restaurant for dinner tonight, so I’ll just go and get the raincoat and wellies at the ready just in case!