Vandal weather

Pottering around this morning with first coffee around 0900, heard a frantic banging on the front door. Took me a minute or two to cotton on, being on upper floor at the time. There’s my neighbour next-door-but-one, pointing at my car and its shattered front passenger window next to the kerb. ‘Someone’s thrown something through the window!’ she said.

We went to look. Greeny crumbs and shards everywhere – the pavement, gutter, dashboard top, floor, seats. Lying on the front passenger seat, a heavy–looking yellowish clay disc about 10 inches across. Apparently she’d heard the crash and rushing out to the street she saw a couple of lads right down at the far end, walking away from her. And an elderly gent here on the opposite pavement making his way slowly to the church at the corner. ‘But we don’t have crime here,’ she said, quite bewildered. Perhaps she felt a bit responsible for the area’s reputation, seeing as I’m the new kid on the block. It’s certainly the impression I’ve had.  However, assumptions were made, and when I got my brains together I called the non–emergency police number. The lads were long gone.

Taped dustbin bags together later to cover the door. Pouring with rain, there was no way to stick tape to anything. I had tried and failed. Managed to trap the plastic in the door all round, in a moment’s lull of the flying gale.

But I don’t think the Chocolate cat liked the sound of the parcel tape dispenser. He was miaowing his head off and he can’t miaow. It’s a huge effort and he only does it in emergencies about once a year. He has an endearing squeak which serves for most occasions. And he’d been scared by the banging on the door and the neighbour he hadn’t met and the wind at the door and all.

‘I thought we’d done with moving for a while,’ he wept. ‘I need a new map every morning as it is…’

‘It’s all right, sweetheart,’ I told him. ‘We’re not moving again. And you must admit the place is much straighter, and nearly all the cardboard boxes have gone. And after all, the floorplan’s been the same for over a week now.’

Tiny Lambkin (moggy, tortoiseshell ex-stray, deemed by vet to be roughly 10 years old) burst into tears at the sight of a large policeman in a hi–viz jacket. Never seen her so distressed.

‘Woe is me the Russians are coming,’ she wailed.

God knows. Don’t ask me. Daren’t think, her being such a starving waif when I first knew her.

So the kind policeman took details. He phoned the station. Conversation from the other end was fairly predictable, going by the answers I heard. Same questions he’d just asked me, including ones like ‘Did I have any enemies – any relationships gone sour?’ I’d said no. Last relationship years ago, amicable split etc etc. I know my neighbours, and the people at the corner shop, and the lady at the library. That’s it. I don’t know enough people here to be falling out with anybody. Friends and relations are a car journey away. They don’t walk past my door. Anyway I’m not the falling-out type. No arguments, no nothing. Honest. Really. So when he said the same thing down the phone, I could virtually hear the reply, ‘That’s what they all say.’  You could see it in the sudden smile across the kitchen table. I’d thought it was probably some yobbos going home still drunk and/or bored/pissed off from last night. More likely, he’d said. We agreed there wasn’t a lot of point calling SOCO. He said any fingerprints would be sweat and with this rain…  but he’d have a drive around town in a minute and see if there was anyone lobbing stuff at other cars. Or something like that. I was politely offered a visit from Victim Support. I politely declined with thanks. Couldn't see the point. Didn't feel like a victim. They surely have far worse to spend their valuable time on.

Then he went to see whether the neighbours could help. I swept up the pavement glass and got frozen fingers and had to come in and plunge them into warm water. My toolbar said rain and snow 1ºC and feels like minus 9. Agreed. Met Office for Peak District today says 50–60 mph gusting 70.

Then I went next door but one, with the PC still there.

Been thinking, I said. I think it’s the wind wot done it. At the time it happened, wind had just gusted to a ferocious level, man next door and I both heard a wheelie bin going over at 9 o'clock, and next-door-but-one heard a roaring sound above everything else. She thought of a herd of buffalo running through her ginnel (one ginnel for every four houses on this terrace).

I’d kept saying earlier how it was a round heavy clay thing – the sort of article you might cap a chimney pot with? Although the police report called it a paving slab. And whose is the only chimney capped and not available for use? Mine. My chimney, my car. There’s justice for you. Even though the car was parked outside next door, the only available space of the moment. 
If we'd all been parked in our respective places...

the offending article

Wind was up all last evening, and all night, forcing the closure of skylights fore and aft, which is highly unusual.  Probably because the wind was mainly coming lengthwise down the street, attacking both slopes.

I remember locking the front door last night and hearing the wind howling out there. I do love the wind, I'd thought, for the thousandth time in my life. 

Um.

Anyway, those lads would’ve been Olympic hopefuls to have got so far down the street, even if they’d changed from sprint to nonchalant walk at the last moment. And they can’t be, because the Glossop Advertiser would have said so. (There’s a local lad in The Apprentice right now apparently, God help him.) 

The PC also visited the elderly gentleman home from church, and guess what he said. As he walked past, he’d been aware of something flying off a roof.  I rest my case.

It’s just a bit of a shame that the car was fresh back from the bodyshop with a brand new front bumper and numberplate (split into two pieces) after a 2mph shunt into the man in front in a very long, very boring traffic jam last week – a second’s inattention of course. And he had no damage whatsoever. 

‘It’s my tow-hook,’ he’d said proudly. ‘Saves me every time.’   

We were so busy enquiring after the other’s health and looking at his magic tow-hook, I never looked at my car. It had just felt like a very gentle bump to me. I picked up a bit of foam off the tow-hook cover and asked where it came from. Yours, he said.

Oh.  Shattered, splintered, what a godawful mess. We shook hands after a chat about the sticker in his back window and drove away and didn’t even exchange numbers. (Mind you I committed his registration to memory. You never know, and he probably did the same.) It was the garage bringing it back to me yesterday and parking it in that particular spot which put it directly in the line of fire.

Those lads may never know how lucky they were. Being ninety seconds earlier might have killed one of them. Shudder.

Think I need a lie down.

Afterthought.

Things like this come in threes, don’t they?  That’s two.

Stand by your beds.

Help

Your help is required.

You can provide a necessary part of a vast network of distractions, helping someone in the First World (debatable) digress from the tasks in hand.  Simply by reading this YOU CAN HELP!

By spending just a few minutes of your time in the service of someone else, you are also gaining brownie points which, in the words of one commenter I’ve read and believed, are entirely calorie–free. What can you lose?

If you weren’t there to give this assistance, I wouldn’t be writing this in the first place. I’ve already stuffed my diary to bursting point and can not, in all conscience, feed it any more without being convicted of repetition and indigestion. Interesting and beautiful pictures off the net, thoughts of the day, lists of things to be done later, fascinating articles from maritime blogs around the world, sample images of great fabrics – all very good but MORE is NEEDED!

Since my posts these days are either long lectures or non–existent, your help here would make all the difference. After all, the task in hand today is to clear out the back bedroom, known as the Back Office, full of paperwork needing attention and filing, plants needing to be pruned and fed if not desperate for repotting, packaging material to be sorted (from the move a year ago – yes, I know..) and cardboard boxes to be kept or not, and masses – masses – of general detritus.

 

I know you will feel better for doing this.

Thank you for your time.

You've helped already, because by getting this far I have now run out of ideas to chase around. Back Office, here we go.

Fog

There’s a lot of it about, tonight. Just been looking at the shipping forecast. Remembered all about fog in Shetland – a bit like the Newfoundland Banks, and high summer was the worst. You could be in your house by the cliff, thinking what a dismal day it was – dense fog, and couldn’t see past the garden wall. You’d go out for milk and find your house was the only one fogged in, along with your bit of cliff. The rest of Shetland was having a blue sky day with roaring sunshine. Or you could sit in the garden and watch long white fingers crawling over the cliff edge towards you, feeling the chill of it long before it touched.

The daffodils are waving in the breeze,

The little lambs are bouncing,

The fog comes rolling in –

It must be June.

Yes, things were always a bit late there. But the fog was always on time. Usually July.

Planes did not fly.  Post did not arrive. You'd be trying to explain to a solicitor or a bank down south that if the document wasn’t arriving, then the sky would just have to go ahead and fall in. No short cuts available. Post does not go by sea.  Helicopters and ambulance flights were a nightmare. Put a helicopter up in a gap and there was no guarantee you’d ever get it back before next week.

It might fly around looking for a landing, and end up in Glasgow. So you did your best not to put it up in the first place. Actually you weren’t allowed to let it take off if you couldn’t land it again, somewhere handy and accompanied by the usual fire protection, Air Traffic control etc etc.

Anyway, I was on watch one night in Shetland, when the fog was all the way from Shetland down the North Sea, the whole east coast solid with it. Very quiet night. Nothing moving. 

About one in the morning the silence was broken by a yacht calling an indistinctly named Coastguard station.  Nobody else answered, so I did. He asked for the weather forecast, and I directed him to the ‘conversation channel’. I asked him for his position.  Always a good idea especially if all of a sudden that’s the last you hear from somebody, on a dark and foggy night. Gives you a place to start when people get worried.  But I was simply intrigued because the funny thing was, he was lighting up all our aerials, from the very far north to south of the Shetland coast, making it look like he was everywhere at once, like God. And since he was only using VHF radio he would have a limit of about 30–50 miles, depending.

“Two miles off the Kentish Knot.”  Could have sworn that’s what he said.  I’d never heard of it but a stab at Kent wouldn’t be far off the mark, so I got him to stand by while I phoned Dover Coastguard. When they’d picked themselves up off the floor they tried calling the yacht. Hopeless. I heard them calling and I heard him not hearing them. They gave me the forecast over the phone and I passed it to the yacht. 

A few minutes later my phone rang.  It was the Coastguard at Tyne Tees.

“Did we just hear what we think we did?”

“You did indeed.”

It’s called atmospheric ‘Skip’, by the way.  Hop skip and a jump.

PS It turned out to be the Kentish Knock, a well-known area of shoaling waters east of the Thames estuary.

Aurora and me

If you go to Shetland (at 60º North) in the winter, you will of course have a good chance of seeing the most amazing auroras.  It’s topical, tonight, because this massive solar flare erupted on Sunday, and I believe it’s with Earth as we speak, and arriving at Mars in a day or two.

I’ve been looking at a site I didn’t know before, the NOAA’s Space Weather site. Interesting stuff, I thought. The word on the street is that this is a G2 storm, but might be a G3 eventually. 

I used to stand on my north–facing back doorstep at Noss, out of sight of any lights from the other four houses, keeping watch on it, diving in at intervals to get warm, but unable to settle, and off out again. 

One early evening I was going to work (for the Coastguard night watch) driving north up the main road to Lerwick, about 25 miles. The aurora was really mounting up to something special that night. I was trying to drive with my nose up against the windscreen. I gave up. Got out of the car and stood there, tears running down my face. I had never seen anything more beautiful.  It was the most powerful display I’d ever known.  I couldn’t reconcile the normality of the aurora with this awesome event. And felt so privileged, not to have missed it. 

The vertical searchlights of green, yellow, blue, pink and all permutations were stretching high up, and shifting sideways back and forth like someone pulling a vast curtain from side to side, the folds passing in front of one another, and superimposed on all that was a layer of flame rising, just like a line of gas flames from east to west, but yellows and oranges, sometimes green and blue, and red. Deep red. I mention it particularly because red is unusual. Deep red is special. Even to those accustomed to the northern lights, it gets an honourable mention.

Well after a few minutes I pulled myself together and drove off. But it was the talk of the ops room when I got there. 

Then one day in April (?), years later, in 2000, there was another, very special, very powerful display. So powerful that people on the south coast of the UK saw it.

I was at Noss as usual, and the living room door to the garden was wide open, and I kept writing about it in my diary then going out for another look. I spent most of the evening in the garden. 

What was so weird was that the aurora wasn’t just in the north of my view. It spread around the hemisphere of my sky into the east and west, just as brilliant as the northern part. Vertical searchlights on full beam, a ring of them – every colour under the sun including vast areas of red, all shifting and pulsing, changing colours, all defying every notion of normal, even for an aurora.  

It continued to grow sideways until the southern sky was full too. I was standing under an upturned basin of light. Could not believe it. Unprecedented. 

A weird feeling had been with me for a few hours, since the display started. It was a while before I registered it consciously. I felt drunk. I was now lurching in and out of the house, and staggering all over the lawn. And the more it went on, the drunker I got.  COMPLETELY SOBER I might add, cos I know what you’re thinking. 

Then I looked up to the centre of the bowl. For mysterious reasons perhaps connected to the properties of magnetism, it is virtually impossible for there to be an aurora right over the centre. Just doesn’t happen. There’s always a hole there.  And there’s always vacancy anywhere south of East or West, for that matter. But holding out my hand, I could just cover the hole.

As I stared, amazed, I saw two curling fingers reach out from north and south, and curl round each other, and – a split second – they touched, and the hole covered over for a minute, and the pulsing flashed gloriously out like rings on a pond…..   I thought – I have just witnessed an event so special – as though the universe just gave birth to something. 

Couldn’t believe what I had just seen with my own eyes.

Don’t think I’ve ever been the same since.

By the way ...

Talking to a friend on the phone next day – he was down near Inverness – he said he’d been for a walk in the woods early next morning and felt really weird, as though he was out of control. And he didn't know a thing about the aurora.   I rest my case.