Storms and junk food

Round about the middle of last week, the UK's Met Office showed prescience and accuracy in its forecasting - two qualities which rarely go together in UK weather forecasting - in warning all us Brits about an impending storm. It was going to track its way across the Atlantic, they said, before reaching the South West mid Sunday eve and hitting the whole of South England on Monday morning. It would be gone by lunchtime on Monday but in that brief period it was going to wreak havoc. Oooh, we said. And, aaaah. But I'm not sure how many of us actually believed it, not least because the weather forecasters stopped short of calling it a hurricane - a political exercise in definitions. It wasn't going to be a hurricane because the 90mph winds would only be felt in gusts. Oh well that's all right then, we said to each other. Not a hurricane. Well, at around 2am the entire population of South England was woken up, and thereafter kept awake, by howling winds and lashing rain, which pulled the trees almost horizontal. Particularly alarming if you live in the shadow of trees that are at least 10 times your height, as I do. By the following morning, anyone who owned garden furniture could no longer locate it. I put my nose outside the door and withdrew it in terror. The wind took my breath away. I wondered for a few minutes whether I couldn't just decide that my work was less important than my wellbeing, and stay at home as the travel advice sugested. But a misguided sense of duty made my mind up for me and 15 minutes later I was out in this weather. Walking up to the main road was like a scene from a science fiction film. Bins flying through the air. Tarpaulin howling, half ripped off scaffolding. Contents of a skip scattered across the road, complete with iron bars that twitched and slid. By the time I reached the main road I had been hit on the leg by a food recycling bin, and been blown over on my back twice. I made it to the station, only to see a tree come crashing down on the line, thus ending any prospect of rail travel for the day. I took my life into my hands and climbed on a double decker bus which pitched and swayed dangerously. I got off near my work 2 hours later, to see that a crane had crashed into the roof of the neighbouring building. I fought off leaves and refugee insects to get into the office. In a building of 2000, maybe 20 of us had made it in. When I left for home, I was exhausted. The storm had moved on but debris was everywhere. I walked back down the road to my house, still littered with bins, branches and iron bars. I let myself into the house. And proceeded to devour two chocolate bars and a tub of ice cream. Sometimes. Just sometimes. Junk food really is the only reward for a very, very hard day.