WEATHER WARNINGS

This has been lurking around, forgotten and unpublished since December, so it’s hardly the most topical of pieces and speaks of weather systems also, I suspect, long forgotten. Still, now that I’ve found it, and in lieu of having anything much else to share with you today, I suppose that I’d better release it into the wild...


I’m sitting here on a wild and windy December evening (you can probably guess which), listening to the gales whipping around the roof slates and battering the surrounding area whilst listening, once again, to news reports of how the weather, of which this country tends to get quite a fair amount, is once more creating havoc to our infrastructure and everyday lives.

Today has been marred by what could really only be described as an excess of the stuff and, as usual, despite the advanced warnings and alerts, it has still managed to cause a certain amount of inconvenience and tragedy. What an unexpected flurry of weather also seems to cause, especially amongst those of us who tend to hang around in offices a fair way from our lowly abodes, is a certain amount of getting into all of a tizzy. Now, this, I suppose is only to be expected. After all, we would all rather prefer to get home safely from doing what is merely what we do to earn a living, and excessively dangerous weather does have a way of adding a certain amount of risk to that progress, and when news reports are talking both of fallen trees and a need to stock your car with three days of survival rations, the average office worker, dependent perhaps on a ramshackle old vehicle or the vagaries of our public transport system is bound to fret a little and perhaps get an over-inflated sense of increased risk which can lead to a desire to take flight an head for the comparative safety of the ol’ homestead.

Once upon a many moons ago, for example, my own thirteen-mile journey back to this wild backwater was plagued by a sudden heavy snowfall and, despite managing to get within a relatively short distance from my own hearth and home after about an hour-and-a-half, a lack of four-wheel-drive capability coupled with the fact that I was behind an idiot meant that, in the end, my journey that evening took four-and-a-half hours to complete, and a scant ten hours later, I had to set off and reverse the direction of that journey in order to face the next working day. But make it I did, and, whilst it was a massive inconvenience, my experiences were as nothing compared to some other poor folk that same night.

However, there was a consequence to this. In subsequent years, the first hint of a snowflake falling would  start to get all of the people working in that rather large, open plan structure of the place that I worked in back then, getting a bit twitchy. Looks would be exchanged. Dark mutterings would be overheard as decisions were taken and fearfully suggested by a form of quiet osmosis and mutual support of the “Well, if they’re going, so am I” type. Fretful telephone calls received from faraway loved ones giving out localised weather updates would add to the general air of fear and slightly defiant bravado, and, eventually, any further snowy precipitation would lead to something resembling a mass exodus, in a way that perhaps resembled a Lemming run, if Lemmings had to look to their peers for affirmation that their decision was a correct one, which, whilst it could never be regarded as an outright “panic” as such, did have the air of quiet desperation about it.

Office workers. The state of perpetual fear we live in.

So it was today when the winds began to howl. Exchanged nervous glances were shared, which were then underscored by a tap upon the door from a girl from a neighbouring office. People, she told us, who had parked their cars under the trees were moving them because of all the branches flying around threatening to shatter windscreens and cause other damage. Of course, this notification came far too late to be of much use as the limited spaces had all been taken by the time the message seeped down to our lowly quarters, but the thought was there and some action of a relocation nature was indeed gratefully taken.

I myself decided, in the end, after briefly poking my nose out into the wild outdoors, to leave my imperiled chariot just where it was. This was not because of any rashness or bravery on my part, but more because I know very well how my own luck works. If, for example, I had taken a look at this morning’s weather forecast and chosen to park otherwhere from the spot I usually choose (Bay No 6. I am not a number…), I could almost guarantee that whoever did park there would find their car unscathed at the end of the day whilst my own would have been sideswiped by the unexpected lorry reversal, or battered by a runaway wheelie-bin or had a chunk of the roof fall upon it, even if the new location I had chosen had never shown any sign of being disaster prone before.

You may doubt the veracity of this belief system. You may very well liken my countenance to that of a certain Eeyore of well-known literary notoriety, but I shall explain. Once upon a time when I was a student, my humble lodging place had a view of the Campus Library and on one rather quiet Saturday afternoon I noticed that some local youngsters were playing about on the roof of it. I paid this little heed, to be honest, thinking that a member of the Security Staff would eventually come along and ask them to shift. Anyway, these frolics and fun had started to go on for a while longer than expected and I had just resolved to go and do something about it when it all went quiet.

Too quiet.

Then I noticed that the little gang had moved on to the building site where a new faculty building was under construction and they were moving one of those massive cable reels about to their obvious joy and amusement. I, however, having developed my skills at being a bit of a killjoy at an early age, decided that this was probably going to get someone hurt, so I ventured reluctantly out of my room and sauntered over towards the Porter’s office to see if I could let them know what was going on.

This being a Saturday there was obviously no-one there. If anyone on the Campus had had some kind of a crisis that weekend, then the Security Staff would have been bugger all use to them, I felt. However, having attempted to do my duty, I sauntered back towards my home across the campus and noticed that it had all gone rather too quiet again, and those little demons had all mysteriously vanished.

I soon found out why. I thought that I’d better just make sure that they weren’t messing around with the cars on the top car park and sure enough, on the top car park there was only one car.

Mine.

And yet, out of all that free and open space, the runaway cable reel had somehow still managed to seek it out and hit it, somehow using my car as a barricade to prevent any damage to the fragile buildings beyond it.

Now, to be fair, it was an ancient Cortina MkIII and fairly indestructible, and a few bangs with a hammer and visits to scrapyards for new lenses had it petty much back in shape, but I learned a lesson or two that day. Firstly, of all the people who could have involved themselves in that little incident, it was only I who had, and yet it was only I who paid any kind of price for my public interest. Secondly, it really doesn’t matter where you park your car. If the fickle finger of fate has pointed it out, then there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it.

Scene of the crime, some other time...