Storm In A Tea Cup

I don't remember the Great Storm of twentyfive years ago. Mostly, I slept through it. There was a similar storm less than three years later, and I remember that one, mostly because it was beginning to pick up wind during the day, and I was outside in the back garden, with my hands resting on the fence. At one point, a gust of wind got particularly strong, and I was lifted bodily off my feet, managing to stay in place only by holding onto the fence. It's the closest I've ever come to flying. Apart from, you know, actual flying in a plane and stuff.

But the 1987 storm, I remember pretty much nothing about. Totting up the years, I must still have been at school, although my memory is trying to tell me that I was older. But then, I was born at the age of 36, so that makes sense. Incidentally, I've been telling people, when in a morose mood, that I was born at the age of 36 for as long as I can remember - since at least the time of the storm, in fact - and suddenly, subtly, I've rocketed to well past that age. Something else to get morose about, I guess.

But I do find it somewhat interesting that the Storm isn't really a fixed point in my memory. Sure, I can remember certain things - how quiet it was that day (not much traffic), and a few roof tiles scattered around. But mostly, I didn't much care, and it was outside my sphere of interest. Today, kids are a lot more sophisticated - by which I mean they'd immediately be uploading photos to Flickr, not that they're eating quails eggs and have annual membership of the ENO - and there's a lot more discourse and discussion of what's going on. If the storm happened again tonight (which I concede would be one hell of a coincidence), most of the newspapers and television stations would be filled with, not actual news, but a rolling gallery of the nation's badly instagrammed pictures of similarly crushed cars and logs. Followed a month or so later by an ITV documentary that revealed that half the pictures were the result of some kind of insurance scam.

Although this by very definition happens to absolutely everybody, it still feels odd to see something referred to that is now part of the cultural history and psyche. By way of clumsy comparison, more time has elapsed between now and the storm than had elapsed between then and the assassination of John F Kennedy, which was so obviously ancient history that I'd covered it for a school project a few years previously. The Storm of 1987 is now pretty much forgotten by those who got through it untouched, and is an irrelevance to anyone who was born anytime after - well, after 1987.

Rehearsals for Three Kinds Of Me continue to go well, and I'll take this opportunity to remind you to get your tickets quickly if you're going to get them at all, since we've only got the show on Friday and Saturday. We've been going through the technical aspects over the last couple of days, which as been as trying as these things usually are, particularly as everyone's feeling a bit under the weather. I think the general consensus is to get through the production until Saturday night, and only then collapse and die.

I myself haven't been feeling all that great, but to be fair that's mainly fatigue as my body attempts to recover from the bruised ribs. They're still painful, but I suspect that I've gotten off lightly, as I'm beginning to feel myself ease up, and I was told that I could potentially be in a hell of lot of pain for anything up to sixteen weeks (we're only on week three). I'm fully aware that they must have been erring on the side of caution in order to cover themselves from any idiots who choose to take them at their words and try to sue them if they don't feel strong enough to throw themselves from a balloon 25 miles above the Earth (for instance) within seven days. But either way, I'll take it as a win.

But the main side effect, I noticed from the whole rib-bruising thing was that I stopped writing. Not entirely, and not even for a full week - I was still noodling rewrites and ideas for the collection of short stories I'm currently hacking out - but I certainly completely flatlined on the steam of momentum I'd managed to build up over the last couple of weeks. It's scary just how difficult - even close to impossible - it was to get my groove back on, even on something like this blog. It's very easy to see how so many so-called writers remain just that: so-called. In the end, I was gently prodded back into service by a friend who declared that she was actually subscribing to the blog on kindle, which gave me an odd sense of responsibility ... well, if someone's actually reading the damn thing, I should really continue writing it. It's always very humbling - and encouraging - to discover you've actually got a reader. It drives you, to strive you on. So to that friend, and those of you who still indulge me by actually reading these very often incoherent ramblings: thank you.