What a weekend of terrifying storms.
My deepest sympathies to the family of Sandra Clark, killed when a tree fell in Mastrick’s Deveron Road. A truly shocking tragedy.
The Neest used to suffer really bad gales causing widespread damage about once a year – if that. But recently we’ve been enduring more and more of them; November brought the devastation of Arwen, now two in one weekend.
I remember being really scared when my auntie took five-year-old Mo for a walk in Victoria Park the day after the notorious January 1953 storm. Everywhere, massive trees had been felled, their huge roots towering above me. Since then, the strength of such winds and their potential for damage has always made me shudder.
You might remember, when Arwen demolished some fence panels, the gardener reckoned my back garden was a bit of a wind tunnel. The perfect thing to say to a wind-phobic wifie. So, I was in a total panic by early last Saturday morning when I started hearing whistlin’ roon the hoose.
I zapped up the radio so I wouldn’t hear the bangs and crashes and kept to the kitchen, out of sight of the garden. Around 11.30am, as requested, my son-in-law arrived to heave the parasol off my outside table, lest it tip over and smash the glass.
However, the moment he opened the back door, all we saw was glass – big shards and minute smithereens over about a third of the lawn. It took us a while to work out it had come from my neighbour’s greenhouse, somehow blasting up and high over the surviving fence.
Does onybody need ony firewood?
During that howling afternoon, I kept my living room curtains drawn to avoid seeing the damage live. Fence panels walloping like sails, my dread was one of them soaring into my floor-to-ceiling window. The relief when it finally died down.
Ditto Sunday evening, waiting for Storm Corrie to hit. Then the lights started flickering. Panic, panic. Fit would a’electric me dee in a power cut? I oot with a torch, a pucklie candles and topped up my mobile.
Sure enough, the garden looked like a well-stocked timber yard
In spite of the telly up at Deafening Mode, I could still hear the thumps, cracks and screechin’ wind. Oh, to live in a ground floor flat with no garden. Because my bedroom’s close to the deconstructing fence, I delayed hitting the sack until 3am, then wore earphones to block the din.
Monday morning, I finally plucked up the courage to open the curtains and survey the damage. Sure enough, the garden looked like a well-stocked timber yard, strips of wood from the demolished panels a’wye.
At least I didn’t have to suffer any power cuts. Commiserations to all of you who did. Nightmare.
In the meantime, onybody need ony firewood? My gardeners are coming to fit a brand new fence at the end of this month. They tell me they need the earth less hard so they can dig deep to cement the posts.
Can they construct a storm-proof fence in my wind-tunnel, when nothing would so much as tip a bittie in a gale? If only.
Moreen Simpson is a former assistant editor of The Press & Journal and started her journalism career in 1970
