WHEN THE WIND BLOWS

“The Met Office have issued a severe weather warning… High winds with gusts of up to 70 miles per hour are predicted…”

You barely hear the weather report as it drifts across the room. Some of the words are lost, drowned out by the crunch of the toast or the slurp of the tea in the mug as you get on with the business of the day, running round feeding, cleaning and clothing yourself in anticipation of another day at the coal mines. The information is sort of in there, lurking around at the back of your mind, but you get on with things and it’s pretty much forgotten about.

It’s only when you stick your nose outside the door on what looks at least like a bright and pleasant enough spring morning that remember those words you sort of heard and you get to realise quite what those high winds actually feel like as they buffet you along the path towards your car and bite through the oh-too-few layers of clothing you’ve decided to wear today.

Then you remember those days where the wind blew so hard that you could barely stay on your feet and you start to look around at the objects all around you and wonder how many of them are likely to stay put and not suddenly fling themselves in your direction and randomly smash themselves and anything else that just happens to get in the way. Will that optimistic chunk of wood that’s holding the cover down on your neighbour’s patio table be enough to stop it being whisked away to places unknown?

You stagger exhausted to the car and having forced open the door and then had it slam shut behind you with unexpected force, you become aware of the relative quiet, even though you hadn’t really noticed the noise of the wind when you were being buffetted along through it just seconds before.

The car is swaying on its suspension springs from the sheer force of this unseen yet devastating natural force, a force so strong and so terrible and yet which you can only see it because of the effect it has on the things being moved by it. The thrashing trees, the swirling leaves and the huddled, scrunched up pedestrians leaning into it at unusual and unnatural angles just to move along against its bitter blow. Even the few birds you see, those elegant masters of flight are being confused by its invisible flow and their usual confident, easily achieved soaring seems to be hampered and not quite right today. But just because you can’t see it, you can still feel it, of course; the biting cold and an unstoppable powerful force that you cannot see but you have to push yourself through to just achieve the simple goal of walking.

Your journey half completed, you bid your farewells, seeing your passenger safely on their way, hoping against hope that the sheer weight of train you are putting them on will mean that it will stick like glue to the rails as it hurtles over those high bridges that you know are further on down the line. You negotiate yourself back to the office and fight your way into the building, the swirling debris following you as you struggle to close the door behind you. Eventually, with your back flat against it as it snugly fits into the hole it usually easily blocks, you can relax and look out of the window and see those long-suffering and ancient trees as their branches are tossed and flung about by the unseen winds.

You venture back up the stairs and you can hear the long low rumbling moan of the stressed air as it flows around you with unexpected speed. Your thoughts go to the outside and just how well attached everything outside the sanctuary, the cocoon, is to where it is, and how many loose objects you and everyone else have left lying around in the gardens of your neighbourhood, and how many of them are likely to stay put under these most extreme circumstances.

There’s the occasional thud as an object hits the glass, or the roof tiles. There’s the occasional scrape. Is that one of the tiles moving…? How solid is this building you’re in? How well-built is it, when it comes down to this sort of relentless punishment? How many times has it survived such an onslaught before, and how many times can it do so again before its luck runs out or the stresses and strains become too much for its structure to bear?

And still there remains that relentless howling, now coming in waves as the gusts arrive and raise the pitch for a moment before ebbing away to build up again and bring another one, and another, and another. You wonder “Am I being punished for something I’ve done? Or perhaps something I’ve not done?” Then comes the occasional whistling alongside the blasts of air, and the rattling of the slates as they lift and then settle again and then lift again as another gust comes along. After this, then everything seems to be shaking and rattling as the gales that have so far only been threatening finally arrive, and the really loud, totally intimidating blasts of accelerated air are upon you.

Batten down the hatches, it’s going to be a bumpy ride…