Monday brought a good downpour. Some rain gauges registered one hundred and twenty liters per square meter. The water from the roof overflowed the gutter and made a waterfall on the other side of the window. The patio turned into a swimming pool. The house is old and water began to fall from the ceiling into the dining room, on top of the sofa. The water from the patio entered through the vents into the basement, like open taps.The storm ended up leaving, but the damage was already done. S'Agaró flooded, I saw it later in the videos. A neighbor from the neighborhood was hit harder: she has a beauty and sports massage business on the ground floor and the water came in through the door. We went to see if she needed anything, she was desperate with the City Council, which raised the street to make a zebra crossing right in front of her door. “Maybe the insurance will pay for it, but then they will raise my premium for next year”.We spent the afternoon taking buckets of water out of the basement of the house. We will have the roof repaired again and look for a solution for below. It could have gone worse, I thought, as I poured scoops of water into the bucket. Around six o'clock a second downpour occurred. It rained inside the house again. Fortunately, this time it cleared up quickly.
I looked at the weather radar before going to sleep. There were no clouds in sight and the forecast for the next day was sunny. In bed, I closed my eyes. What a shitty day. I slept all night straight through, it even felt strange to me. The last few weeks I've had trouble sleeping because of a tax office requirement.The neighborhood is full of old houses from the cork era and I live surrounded by construction. Some houses are now waking up from their winter lethargy and preparing for wealthy summer visitors. The radial stops here and starts there. Trucks and vans on the sidewalk. Houses don't maintain themselves. If you neglect them, they deteriorate and rot, and a moment comes when the only solution is to tear them down and start over.A house, a country. Perhaps you have managed not to hear the family's complaints and that no one can hold you accountable afterwards. It will be even worse. For a few years, if it doesn't rain much, you can imagine that nothing is happening, that only time is passing and that time is harmless. But time is not neutral. You have to try harder and harder, not to hear the strange creaks or to see the cracks, the damp patches and the doors that don't fit well, the broken tiles and the loose floor tiles when you step on them. Until one day the thunder is heard no matter how much you cover your ears, a deluge falls and it turns out you were living little less than in the open.
