storm victim

Saturday the 6th March started out a beautiful day; fine and sunny, a little on the humid side, but glorious.

After a sleep-in, we headed into the city for coffee and crepes (gluten-free, of course) outdoors at the Le Triskel, then on to the Kino to buy tickets for the afternoon showing of Rose et Noir (aka Fashion Victim) at the French Film Festival.

The session started at 1:45; the sun was shining and it was a balmy 26 degrees - really, too nice a day to spend in a dark cinema, but there are few screenings of any given movie during the Festival, so you just have to go when the session is on if you want to see a particular film.

Rose et Noir was a beautifully-produced period farce, set in 17th century France and Spain, about a very flamboyant dress-designer and his troupe who are sent to Inquisition-era Spain at the order of the King of France to make a wedding dress to help seal a marriage of state. What the designer doesn't know is that one of his entourage is secretly Jewish, another Muslim, and another, a Protestant planning to plant a bomb to blow up their hosts!

The story was building up nicely, until, about an hour in, just before 3pm, the film suddenly lurched to a halt and began to burn up! Oh mon dieu, not again! This is what happened when I went to see Julie and Julia at the Classic not six months ago!

As the house lights came up, a stressed cinema guy announced that a severe hailstorm had knocked out the building's air conditioning, causing the film to burn. They would try to get the film to resume in the next 10-15 minutes.

So we sat and waited, and then, about 15 minutes later, the cinema guy returned to tell us that the movie could not be saved, and that we would all need to get refunds and leave.

Disappointed, and none the wiser about what had happened outside the cinema, we queued for our refunds, and left the building at around 3:30pm. When we approached the exit, it felt as though we'd been transported to another place!

The sunny, balmy afternoon that we had left two hours earlier had been replaced by a scene of stormy carnage! The sky was leaden, water literally lapped at the entrance to the building as the floor flooded, the streets were littered with leaves that had been stripped from the trees by what we were later to learn were giant hailstones (such as the ones that had also killed our movie), rain poured from the sky in a way that I hadn't experienced in many years. The change in conditions was stunning!

Not yet comprehending the extent of the storm's fury, we headed for our tram in Swanston St, soaked to the skin within the first 50 metres of our journey (no coats or brollies, of course - it had been a gorgeous day when we left home!)

At Swanston St, it became clear that we would never get aboard the few trams that were managing to make their way down the flooded street, so we decided to head towards Flinders St station. It soon became clear, from the size of the sodden crowds teeming down the Swanston St away from the station, that there would be no trains to catch at Flinders St.

We continued walking across Princes Bridge, past traffic jammed in between flooded streets, in the hope of finding a bus further down the road.

To our delight, we instead found that trams that had made it this far into the city were turning back at the Arts Centre, which meant that we were able to hop on board a #64 and commence the trip home. Just as well, as the corner of St Kilda Road alongside the NGV, from the where the bus comes, was under water, and the buses would likely have been jammed in with the rest of the traffic.

As we travelled cautiously along St Kilda Road, we could see cars trapped in flood water, thick hail piled up in the gardens and gutters, steam rising like fog from the Domain, where the ground was apparently still warm from the afternoon sun. It was an amazing experience.

We finally arrived home around 5pm; one-and-a-half hours for what would usually have been a 40-minute journey, but we were grateful to have made it safely.

I'd of course left a couple of windows of the flat open in the morning to get the air in while we were out, so there was some minor flooding in the kitchen and bathroom where the rain had been blown in, but no major damage.

Except that we didn't get to see the end of Rose et Noir... and who knows when we ever will!