Have I mentioned that I’m terrified of thunder? I am absolutely whimperingly petrified of thunder – not of lightning, which could do me real harm, but of the angry growly noise that follows. As a matter of fact I love watching lightning, but I have to clap my hands over my ears after the flash or resign myself to shrieking like Ned Flanders.

Where I live, the last few days have been scorchio. My partner’s taxi recorded an outside temperature yesterday of 33 degrees Celsius, which is crazy hot for England. Unfortunately for me, hot = thunderstorms, and I managed to get caught out in one this morning while walking across the local recreation ground. In between pathetically begging the thunder to go away and leave me alone, I idly wondered if Pavarotti would be singing in the cricket pavilion.

Guess what – he was there, practising his scales.

OK, it’s highly unlikely that the great Luciano himself makes a regular guest appearance in the cricket pavilion of a south Cambridgeshire village, but a tenor with a pretty good voice does flex his vocal cords on a regular basis in this humble location. I often hear him as I scoot around the village to clean various houses, and he always makes me smile. Our cricket pavilion has its very own opera singer. I love random things like that, and this morning, as I took shelter from the storm under the pavilion’s porch, he helped take my mind off the scary thunder.

It was a sweet moment.

Here’s Luciano Pavarotti (not my pavilion tenor) singing the beautiful Nessum Dorma. Enjoy!