angels moving the furniture

Definitions

1. 1

   An explanation for a crash of thunder.

   • I remember my Mother defusing our scare of summer thunder with an explanation learned from her Mother. 'Nothing to fear. Only the angels moving the furniture around in one of the many mansions,' she'd tell us.
   • She told Camillus not to cry, it was only the angels moving the furniture in heaven. Sometimes, after the storms, she sensed that the mountains were prowling around the house, in two opposing lines, like a grand chain.
   • The corrugated iron roof made the gutted house a drum, the high hat hiss and clack of it, white noise with thunder noises off, 'the angels moving the furniture about' as my great-gran used to say.

The neighborhood