My room was pitch black save from the blue silhouette of my
blinds and I wrapped myself in my bed sheets as the wind roared outside. I decided there and then that I wasn’t going
to Uni – not in this weather. I considered
it a risk to my life to even leave the house this morning. My Twitter feed was inundated with storm
chaos updates: fallen trees, floods, transport bedlam – Central Station had to
be evacuated after the glass roof shattered.
There were also the flippant tweets like film adaptations for the return
of “Hurricane Bawbag”; Bwabag 2: Desolation of Bawbag, being the best.I went downstairs to (what seemed like) total destruction. Two fence panels completely destroyed; no internet, landline or Sky TV. Without these commodities there’s nothing left for me to do in my world, nothing left of any value. I might actually have to stop procrastinating!
Gale force winds for a few hours and our daily routines descend into madness. A state of emergency is declared as infrastructure halts and people can’t get to work, the shops, or whatever they were expecting to do today; children are sent back to exasperated parents and we pick up the fallen trees and broken glass.
It’s inconvenient,
but it’s not devastating.
We forget what a nuisance
the weather can be sometimes. Really, we
take it for granted every day. You’ll
have forgotten by now, but as I was moping about having no internet for one morning,
I was reminded of the Philippines. It’s
estimated that up to 10,000 people have died from hurricane Haiyan, one of the
strongest hurricanes ever to have hit land.
It puts our “Bawbag the Second” in perspective. Our weather is irritating, that’s it. We can rebuild minor damage in an afternoon;
it’ll take the victims of Haiyan their entire lives.
Now, all is still
and the sun is breaking through the clouds.
“Bawbag” is moving south for the English to deal with and will probably
be rebranded into something unrecognisable.
Tomorrow is another day.
