I'm in love with every strange unfolding day as the storm begins to break cover

[venta]

The BBC has just reminded me that it's twenty years today since the "Great Storm" in 1987. Among people my age - old enough to rember it, not really old enough to appreciate that it was more than a spot of run-of-the-mill bad weather - I suspect it's most commonly remembered as the storm which arrived in defiance of Michael Fish's jocular remarks that there was no need to worry. That he didn't really say that is largely irrelevant, of course; some stories are too big to be squashed by their own fallacy.

On the night of the Great Storm I was camping in a tent. Fortunately, only in a friend's back garden. We were determined to stay there - she had 50p riding on it, as her brother had bet we would wuss out even before the weather worsened. Her mother became increasingly determined as the night wore on that we were coming in the house. Her mother won, and I still remember being surprised the following morning by the wreckage of the garden: the large, heavy camping stove we'd cooked on the night before thrown across the lawn and the tent demolished.

I don't think the north got it nearly as badly as the south east did. Anyone else have any particular memories of it ?

Comments

[ebee.livejournal.com]

I remember it clearly..my mum made us sleep at the ends of our bed furthest from the windows, and that night, our huge apple tree fell down in the garden onto the conservatory roof and my mum had to close nursery (ran in our downstairs) the next day. two of the toy trucks in the garden ended up on the other side of the lawn and 3 trees fell down on our way home from school.

A few weeks later some men came to move the old apple tree and cut it down, I remember they bought a small boy who sat in the tree with them as they cut it up. It made me cry because the tree was hurt and my mum cried too..so that afternoon we went and planted a new one but it was little and spindly and never really grew much til we moved to Cornwall.

Our old house was here in Ealing, in the posher part and I remember so vividly the tree- it had always seemed a strong good friend to me. Guess it doesn't take much to imprint Paganism on a kid.

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

We had an apple tree down in that storm too (and it took out part of the fence), but strangely I'm not a pagan.