Oh well, since you asked...
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted in "The Other Place":
We were working at a farm called Baro, which is well up into the Lammermuirs, draining a field, when one of the machines broke down. It was getting near the end of the day so I said to the other guys to head back down to Gifford to finish on time and I'd stay behind to meet the mechanic who was coming up to fix the digger and I'd get a lift back down with him.
It was a balmy summers day and the view from the hill we were working on was of the whole of East Lothian, right down to the coast. I lay down with my back against a coil of drainage plastic to enjoy the view and the sunny weather.
I noticed a bank of black clouds making its way up from the coast to where I lay, and heard the unmistakable sound of a thunderstorm within.
As it made its way up the hill, this took about 10 minutes, I had plenty of time to watch it and head off into a Ford Roadless tractor, one with the four big wheels, a mighty brute, where I'd be protected from the rain.
The wind was beginning to pick up.
One thing I noticed as the clouds approached was that they were very low, lower than I'd ever seen, and the wind was getting very strong.
I sat in the Roadless scared ****less. The clouds, and the thunderstorm, surrounded me. The tractor was nearly blown over by the wind, and the thunder and lightning were all around. The hail was battering off the tractor, the sound was deafening.
I was inside the thunderstorm.
My hair stood on end all over my body, charged by the static electricity. I didn't so much hear as feel the storm inside me. I could smell the ammonia as the lightning fused the nitrogen and oxygen of the atmosphere.
This can't have lasted any more than a couple of minutes but it felt like a lifetime.
It passed over, and by the time the mechanic arrived the clouds had gone, the sun was bright, there was no sign of the storm at all, save for chipped paint on the tractor and a badly shaken drainer.
I never want to experience anything like it again.
Needless to say, at the very suggestion of a thunderstorm I'm normally to be found hiding under the nearest table.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
*/me shudders
*
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