Today we had a MASSIVE thunderstorm. I mean huge, with forked lightening and it rained torrentially ALL day.
Now I like torrential rain,  but I HATE storms. Which is sad because they are beautiful and awesome, but - here's the thing - they're also pretty much the ONLY thing that I am still really scared of.

I used to be scared of lots of things, like spiders and the dark and dying in my sleep and daddy-long-legs and big dogs (especially Rottweilers) and the dentist and bananas (in case they had foreign poisonous spiders in) and a whole other load of irrational things, and now, pretty much the only things that scare me are
1) The thought of losing people I love,
2) My boss
3) Thunderstorms.

Now the first two are completely rational fears (you'd understand if you knew my boss) so they don't really worry me. I know its OK to be afraid of those things and I can accept that fear.
All my other fears were pretty stupid and I decided that I had to face and overcome them, and I did. Except thunderstorms.

Today, because of the storm, I had to make sure that I was dressed nicely (In case I got struck by lightening, and died. My mother always used to say things like make sure you brush your hair and teeth, and are wearing clean underwear, you might get hit by a bus and die, and then what would people think if you looked a mess? )
Part of me thinks it wouldn't matter at all, they'd understand as you'd been hit by a bus, but I can see that if someone is going to find my corpse, I suppose I would like to look presentable, I wouldn't want the last image/memory of me on this planet to be an unattractive one...)

I also was wearing insulating soled shoes for most of the day, this is meant to be useful if you get hit by lightening, allegedly it can stop you from dying because rubber is an electrical insulator... personally I don't think that if a lightening bolt of several hundred million volts wants to get through you to the ground that it is going to be deterred by an inch of rubber, but I want to increase my chances...

On average 2400 people a year are killed by lightening in thunder storms. That's just by lightening not any other associated risk of storms (flooding, high winds, things falling on you etc.).
What is even more scary is that the majority of people hit by lightening do NOT die, however lightening victims have a much shorter lifespan on average, and suffer from conditions such as sleep deprivation, to acute paranoia to memory loss throughout the remainder of their lives.
And imagine how scared you'd be of storms then!

The chances of being struck by lightening are about 1 in 700,000 although some people say as low as 1 in a million. Still that is more likely than winning the lottery by quite a long way...

So I spent all day in a slight state of panic.
But I was wearing my nicest underwear.

I was standing in the conservatory, as usual, smoking a cigarette, when it occurred to me that I could be smoking outside. (This observation partially inspired by a scathing admonition on Drakonskyr http://www.xanga.com/Drakonskyr)

It was the first nice day we've had for a while, which could be why this epiphany was so long in coming.

But that is a lame excuse, the real reason is that it rarely occurs to me to spend time outside for pleasure.
Unless I go somewhere deliberately so-to-do (often involves paying for the privilege).

There are lots of lovely places outside for free. The place I am staying has a garden!

I was out there for ages. I watched the sun set (beautiful). Then I came back in immediately because it became instantly freezing (ahhh British weather).

So do yourself a favour and go outside for free. And enjoy it.
And if you don't have a garden, jump the fence into a neighboring one.
After all, I bet they never use it.

P.S
I google image-searched '"jump" and "garden fence"' And this was one of the first results. So naturally, I had to share it.