On Thursday evening I sat in a French garden listening to huge peals of thunder rolling across the fields and vineyards and watching the rain clouds slowly head on collision courses through the heavens and I thought of two people and two lessons they taught me. The first was my late mother who never wasted an opportunity to draw our attention to thunder, and indeed even lightning, and remark how exciting it sounded. She would point out how charged the air was and the static electricity that made the hairs stand up on our arms. On those occasions when the thunderstorm would result in a power outage, she would light candles, cook on an old camping stove we had tucked away under the stairs and tell stories until bedtime. We loved every minute of these storms and…