Documenting Storm Éowyn from my three-storey house on the very top of a hill in the 'red zone'
Let's all 'hunker down' together...
So, on Thursday afternoon, I was sitting at my desk, hard at work on book # 8, when, all of a sudden, my phone went off like a klaxon, making me literally shriek with fright as it delivered this message with maximum DRAMA:
OK, that’s a lie: I wasn’t diligently working on Book # 8 at all — I was obsessively looking up news about the oncoming storm, while repeatedly asking Terry if he thought the roof would blow off the house. And I’d just been told there was going to be an emergency alert sent out, so I knew it was coming at least two minutes before it actually arrived.
I did still shriek loudly, though, so at least that bit’s true.
This is what it’s like to be British though. We collectively loose our minds over the slightest deviation in our weather, whether it’s a ‘heatwave’ in the middle of summer, or OMGSNOW in the winter — i.e. exactly when you’d expect these things to happen. We have absolutely no chill whatsoever for stuff like this, which is why, not long after the emergency alert went out, the supermarket shelves were bare, and everyone was preparing for the End of Days.
I, of course, am no exception to this collective hysteria about weather, so while I didn’t rush out to panic-buy bread and bottled water (let’s hope that sentence doesn’t turn out to be foreshadowing something … ), Storm Éowyn is currently my entire personality, and, to be totally honest, I was really struggling to come up with a topic for this week’s newsletter anyway, so I will now proceed to live-blog today’s1 events; with sincere apologies to anyone for whom weather is just a totally normal event, and not worth mentioning…
5am
I awake in the early hours of the morning to find the bed shaking underneath me. It takes me a few seconds to figure out if this is the wind, or just Terry snoring, but nope — it’s the wind. IT HAS BEGUN, people.
Now, I should probably add here that it’s not actually particularly unusual for the top floor of our house to shake in high winds. For those who don’t know, we live in a three storey detached house which is perched right on top of a hill, at the very highest (and therefore windiest) point of the county. The house is tall and narrow, and it moves in the wind. The first couple of times I felt this happen I was convinced I was imagining it, but it turns out it’s real, and it’s supposed to do that. At least I think it’s supposed to do that?
Anyway, it was doing that. This did not bode well.
8am
The winds are still high, and the house is still shaking. School has been cancelled today because of the whole ‘risk to life’ thing, and Max is at my parents’ house, where he had a sleepover last night. (He had been going to do this anyway, and we decided to go ahead with it because they live in a bungalow, in a valley, so the wind won’t be as loud, or as scary for him there, and there’s much less chance of their roof blowing off.) Technically, I could have myself a nice, lazy morning, but we’ve been told there’s a good chance of the power going out today, and there’s no way I’m prepared to face some kind of Wizard of Oz situation in my dressing gown, so I get up, have a quick shower, and get dressed. This is riveting stuff, isn’t it? I bet you wish we had storm warnings more often now…
9am
The rain starts, and so do the SeeSaw messages from Max’s teacher. It seems that, even though today would only have been a half-day at school (and part of that would’ve been taken up by the planned Burns Night Assembly, which has been cancelled along with everything else…), the school have decided to set a full-day’s work for everyone, which means I have to figure out how the hell this stupid SeeSaw thing works, so I can send the tasks to Max, via my parents. I now understand what the lockdown must have been like for parents of school age kids, and let me tell you, it must have been exactly NO FUN at all…
9.20am
Max’s first task is to circle how he’s feeling on this chart:
Max asks me to circle ‘happy-but-with-a-blocked-nose’, which isn’t actually one of the options. No one has asked me, but I’d probably go with ‘tired’ and ‘confused’.
Why do some of the people look like humans, but the ‘confused’ guy looks like an egg, though?
10am
I’m at my desk, with rain battering against the window and the wind howling around the house. Our office is on the second floor, though, so at least it doesn’t shake.
The highest winds are supposed to start around now and last until about 5pm. Even though Terry insists I’m being stupid, and that the roof won’t blow off, I move my guitars and jewellery box down a level, so that if we DO lose the roof, I’ll still be able to play guitar, while wearing jewellery. This is very clever of me, and not at all a complete over-reaction.
10:25am
Max has to write a book report. I ask my mum to get him to type it into the phone, so I can paste it into SeeSaw but, when it arrives, I have a strong suspicion he’s used the text-to-speech option instead:
Hi mummy I am now going to do the book title. The book title is the danger gang it was a really good book now I give it free stars. This book was about it was about lots of things like they were trying to figure out all the problems and freaky that’s their town. It was very fun for them to do it. What is their friends called? Eric was a shark. He can turn into a shark when water gets splashed on him And my favourite part was probably when they tried to go through his dad‘s company shadow tag tech but I just realised I’m not supposed to tell you that that was a secret.😱👇🤣😀😆🙂🙃😉😊☺️
I upload a condensed version of this to SeeSaw, then spend some quality time feeling anxious about it. What will the teacher say? Will I … I mean Max … get a good grade? Is it cheating that I took out the emojis and changed ‘free’ to ‘three’. Am I … a cheat?
(Also: 3 stars for a book he claimed was ‘really good’? Savage.)
10:30am
He’s also got two tic-tac-toe addition problems to do. I can’t make head nor tail of them.
I hate this.
10:39am
Realize the tic-tac-toe thing was assigned on November 1st. Whoops.
Am the worst parent ever.
10:41am
Max’s teacher has ‘liked’ the book report but not commented on it. WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?
10:57 am
Max’s teacher has said ‘well done!’ on his book report.
I still think she knows I edited it for him.
11:46 am
Winds are at 80mph now, apparently, which is unheard of for here. It’s really noisy, even in the office, but so far no loss of power or damage to anything around us as far as I can see. Starting to think I’ve over-reacted by moving stuff out of the bedroom. And by dedicating an entire newsletter to this complete non-event.
12:00
I really should be working on my stupid book right now, but I’ve been stuck on a really boring bit all week, and I just can’t seem to focus on it. Also have a horrible feeling that if it’s boring to write, it’ll probably be boring to read? Just want to scrap the entire thing at this point, tbh. Also really want to clean the house, just to get away from my desk.
12:34pm
The Reedsy editor I use to write randomly glitches, then deletes about 400 words of the book. It’s never done anything like that before (or I wouldn’t spend so much time singing its praises…) so while I can’t really imagine how it could possibly be created to the storm, I’m going to blame Éowyn anyway.
*&%$ you, Éowyn.
1:23pm
The door of the office, which has been rattling constantly in its frame, accompanied by the sound of the letterbox on the front door blowing open and closed, suddenly swings eerily open, as if to admit an unseen force. So that’s reassuring.
Meanwhile, some of our friends in the street have had their van dented by a flying bin.
I go to get out some candles just in case the power goes out later (We have torches, but I don’t want to miss the opportunity to pretend we’re in a gothic horror novel, especially if the doors continue to open at random), but all we have left is a couple of Christmas candles, which it just feels wrong to burn in January.
This is intolerable.
1:25pm
Order new candle.2
2:19pm
Trees down in the village! I repeat: we have trees down in the village!
3pm
One thing I’ve learned from this experience is that I really freaking hate the word “hunker”. Like, every single person in Scotland and Ireland right now is talking about how they’re “hunkered down”. I, meanwhile, refuse to ‘hunker’. I will not ‘hunker’, and you can’t make me. I will just sit in my chair like I normally do, thanks. #REBEL
3:52pm
The clouds briefly part to reveal a brief glimmer of blue sky. It might just be wishful thinking on my part, but I think the wind’s starting to die down a bit?
4pm
I think I hate all the ‘hunkering’ so much because every time someone says they’re ‘hunkered down’ I immediately imagine them sitting in this position:
So now I’m assuming everyone in the country has been in this exact position for the entire day, and, honestly, that’s just weird, isn’t it? And really uncomfortable, too.
Quite looking forward to the new candle, though.
4:26pm
The wind returns with a vengeance.
5:03pm
Wind has died down quite a bit now. I’ve somehow managed to write just over 2,800 words (Although, of course, 400 of those were just me re-writing the words that mysteriously disappeared, only not quite as well, because I couldn’t really remember what they were. Bet they were better than the shite I came up with to replace them, though…), despite feeling like I’ve spent most of the day with my nose pressed against the window, watching the wind blow the rain around. I sheepishly take my ‘valuables’ back up to the bedroom, where they belong.
*
I abandoned my attempt to document the storm after that because there was literally nothing to document (And don’t get me wrong, I’m very glad about that…), but suffice it to say that Max made it home safely once the red warning had been lifted, and we woke up this morning to more snow, but, thankfully, no damage to the house.
Speaking of Max, though, one night last week I was doing his reading with him before bed and we reached this passage:
Max stumbled over the word ‘bluster’, so I stepped in to help him sound it out. “So, it starts with a ‘buh’, I said encouragingly. “Buh…? Buh…?”
“Bastard?” ventured Max, his brow wrinkling with concentration. And that, my friends, is why this week’s newsletter was going to be called “The Huge Bastard Wind That Threatened to Blow Us All Away” until I realized your email programs would probably mark it as spam if I called it that.
Join me next week, though, for more anticlimactic adventures and up-to-the-minute weather reports! You know you want to…
I obviously meant to send this yesterday, but the time somehow got away from me: whoops!
Not that you asked, but it’s Yankee’s Clean Cotton, which is one of my favourites, and makes your entire house smell like a fresh load of laundry. Perfect candle for January, basically.