As I write, storm Franklin is thrashing around outside trying to outdo it’s older siblings Dudley and Eunice. The latter came through here two days ago showing 969 millibars (hectopascals) and scared the life out of me and the ridge tiles of my house. Said storm proceeded to wrestle to the ground a 250 year old lime tree in the field across the lane. That this tree has significance to us is beyond the remit of this post/page/website. The tree also fell onto a rusting dutch barn flattening what was left from a storm 3 years ago into a mangle of corrugated rust and retired and rotted telegraph poles.
Curiosity took me out there to inspect the damage. The tree was rotten mostly through and clearly wan’t long for this world anyway, wind or no wind. I was just about to retrieve a branch or two for the home hearth when I spotted a fully intact insulator lying on the top of the grass as though it had been left there just minutes before for me to find. Then I found two more, slightly more concealed. Much excited rationalising led me to conclude that they were somehow wedged into the tree as a byproduct when the poles were used to make the now planate barn. Serendipity* that Eunice should have lead me to them.
I thought of the title of this post way before I started writing anything. I felt sure that if I just kept writing I could think of some connection between someone called Jim and the happenstance of me finding some old insulators. Like you now, I realise this far into the post that it’s just not going to happen. I can’t think of any association. At all. Try as I might. But I’ve written the heading now and I’m not the sort of person to go back and change it. So cheers, to the Jims of this world. And to one in particular 😉 May you be Lucky Jim.
* not for the lime tree.
