I asked my wife if she fancied a little music on the patio tonight.
As Storm Brendan Hits
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Tag Archives: Storm
Thought For The Day
My wife Jen told me that this is an ideal day to get the washing dry.
If any of my neighbours should find our towel, you can keep the pegs.
A Glimpse Into Cold, Jackdaw Hell
Wednesday morning. I was due to travel to Leeds. The so called Beast from the East had come roaring in and plunged much of the country into freezing inertia. If it wasn’t imperative to travel I wouldn’t have bothered, but I infrequently take part in medical trials and was due to check into a clinic that afternoon.
There was the threat of train cancellations due to the conditions, and I had to weigh up my options: gamble on a train from Manchester for £5 or a taxi for £50. Putting all my snowballs in one basket, I went for the former.
It didn’t get off to a good start. On the road where I was to catch the bus, there was a quarter of a mile backlog of traffic going nowhere. So I decided to walk down into the town centre to catch another bus.
We live on top of a hill, and one Christmas, maybe around 2010, taxis couldn’t get up to us and all of the buses were cancelled. I wondered how long it would be before we started eating each other.
Anyway, I walked into the cold wind, snow whipped up and swirling around me. Clutching my case, my head buried within my jacket collar and cap, on I went. I jumped the bus at the station-it was already running fifty nine minutes late, and commenced on a journey that, normally taking forty minutes, took an hour and a half. It doesn’t take much to bring this country to a standstill. If only Russia and such countries would tell us their secret. They could have sent it first class with the Beast from the East.
I hurried to the train station, fearing cancellations, but my train arrived only nine minutes behind time. An icy wind funnelling through the platform, the train looked as cold as I felt.
The train was perishing, slipping through sleeves of snowstorms.
You get the picture. Pretty monochrome, right?
Hebden Bridge station looked quite picturesque, the wind blowing across the signal box’s mantle of snow as we approached. It made me think of Bavarian chateaus and Where Eagles Dare.
The train eventually ploughed into Leeds train station, and I began the cold walk to the clinic. And cold it was too. And guess what? When I got there I found that I was a ‘Standby’ volunteer. Which means effectively that I was to stay overnight and return home in the morning. (Sigh)
That evening the snow didn’t stop outside my window, the drifts getting higher and higher. It was like one of those films:
Snowed inside a clinical research lab. Soon people begin to die.
One by one.
How long? I wondered. How long before we begin eating each other?
The morning broke and I knew I was in trouble. The snow had continued throughout the night approaching window height, and there was already talk of train cancellations and gridlocked motorway traffic in various parts of the country.
A new storm was set to roar in by the name of Emma, or Emily. Whoever it was she was a frosty woman, and I needed to set off as soon as possible to avoid getting stranded here in Yorkshire. Sixty mph snowstorms were due to hit around 10.00am. Guess what time I was set to leave the clinic. You couldn’t write it. They wouldn’t believe you.
I had limited clothing with me, expecting to spend six days in a warm clinic, so I prepared to venture out by putting on three t-shirts beneath my jumper, and also two pairs of socks. Looking hench, I walked once more unto the breach.
I got to the station unable to feel my fingers or face. There were cancellations and delays all over the place.
All around me was a sea of frustrated faces as cancellations were announced over the tannoy. It was like Planes, Trains And Automobiles. Trying to get home for Christmas. Whoever added those last lines had a fine appreciation of irony:
Phone signals were going, dead ends were flashing all over the Departures board. I knew I was up against time-the longer I waited the least options I’d have. I managed to get myself a train to Manchester that was one of the few that wasn’t delayed. I scurried to the platform and read reassuringly:
Next train Platform 9. Manchester Victoria, 10.26. On Time.
It said on time at 10.26. 10.28. 10.33. 10.38
No sign of the damn thing. Then the sign changed to:
Next train Platform 9. Skipton. Cancelled.
Skipton! What the hell had happened to Manchester? Groans and confusion abounded. A great sigh went up among the Israelites.
I saw a railway employee and asked him if he had any idea what had happened to my train as it was no longer on any arrivals board.
“Ah you mean the train that I’m supposed to be driving? Haven’t a clue mate. I’ll try and find out.”
It was almost a Beatles song. I’ve got no train and it’s breaking my heart. But I’ve found a driver and that’s a start.
He arrived back shouting instructions: “The 10.26 to Manchester” (please ignore the fact that it was now 11.03) “is now on platform 2c.”
Where was platform 2c? “Back over the bridge on the other side.”
I really thought I was going to end up on the Other Side.
We all set off upthedamnstairsagainoverthebridgedownthedamnstairsagain. The wannabe driver scratched his head. “There’s no train on platform 2c”
I started to think I was never going to make it home. But then a train, looking like it had been dragged shamefully out of storage, came rolling in. Finally! I got on the train, threw my case in the overhead storage space, took out my book and settled down. Screw you Beast from the East. Kiss my arse Emily AND Emma. I’m going home!
“Excuse me everyone, you’re going to have to get off the train. I don’t know why but they’ve cancelled this one now.”
(Two lines here have been deleted as a matter of decency.)
I approached two railway men staring aghast at the nearest information board, trying to make sense of a series of chaotic letters.
“My first train has vanished into some netherworld, my second train has been cancelled before it even moved. Have you any ideas to what I can do now?”
“Where you heading for?”
“Manchester.” It sounded as reachable as Oz.
“The 11.28 to Liverpool. It goes via Manchester. You have to be quick as its due in in three minutes. They are running late though.” (The Understatement of the Year award goes to this particular fella.)
“Where is it?”
“Platform 16.”
Roughly translated as upthedamnstairsagainoverthebridgedownthedamnstairsagain.
I made it. Just. Half of the desperate commuters in the station must have been redirected to this train. The platform was swarming, I kept looking up at the information board don’t you dare! Don’t you dare!
The train came in like a lame apology. We all got on. There was nowhere to sit so I stood in the aisle. I didn’t care if it was a cattle truck. And at least this train had heating. I was on the home straight.
Twenty minutes into the Trail of Salvation the train came to a stop in the middle of snow-filled-fields-nowhere. And then the announcement: We were delayed because there was a problem with (probably frozen) points on the line ahead. Also a train had broke down. And there were four motionless trains ahead of us in the queue.
I sat down on my case quietly fuming. Did I mention that I was wearing three t-shirts and two pairs of socks?
The faceless announcer told us that as we were over thirty minutes late we could apply to be compensated for our fare, but as I had paid for a ticket for a train that didn’t arrive, switched to a train that didn’t leave the station, and ended up on this train run by a totally different rail company I decided I wouldn’t even know where to start.
And so we waited, outside it snowed. And, cutting the story short because I’m pushing myself back over the edge: we limped into Huddersfield, crawled into Manchester. I got a bus into my town centre bus station where I discovered the final, crushing nail in the coffin:
My estate was cut off again. Just like 2010. I was going to have to walk up that hill to my house in the middle of a snowstorm.
How long before I start to eat myself?
The Storm Moves Out
A new poem on my poetry blog Coronets For Ghosts. Written the morning after.
The Storm Moves Out pale violet the storm moves out to sea I look for signs in the arranged debris montage of a divine hand the swamped streets bring the latest obsession my way string-of-beads prophecies in the forest of home glass wreckage embryo shards a priest blesses specimen jars sending kisses into sleep ©AndrewJamesMurray
Come On, Aileen
The first storm of the season, named Aileen, is due to hit tonight. For perspective, Aileen is no Irma, but still. I’ve taken down the hanging baskets and an outside lantern which is as much as I can do with no hatches to batten down.
The afternoon I spent working on a second poetry collection I’m trying to put together, while listening to a group from my favourite music period.
I have a friend who loves the eighties, and would instantly recognise the nod given by the title of this post. My own go-to listening preference stretches from the mid-sixties to early seventies. The Beatles; The Doors; The Kinks; The Rolling Stones; Tim Buckley; Cream; Cohen; Dylan, I love all of these and more.
Being born in 1971 means that in my youth I’ve never been in vogue, musically. And don’t even mention my dress sense!
Listening to music helps when I’m writing. The group I was listening to today was Jefferson Airplane. Why do I like these?
Go and ask Alice. When she’s ten feet tall.
The Morning After
Manchester: the sun was out; the sky blue; the trams were running again.
Storm-what storm?
Blow Me Down
It is no wonder that, much to my children’s great chagrin, we have had no snow this winter. We just seem to be assailed by one great storm after another. We get through one spell of gale force winds and torrential rain, and then find there is another storm building in the Atlantic.
It was only December that I posted about the storm that brought my Mum’s chimney down next door, and last night the wind seemed to be howling more furiously than ever.
At least here in the north we do not experience the floods that much of the UK is suffering from at the moment. The coast has been ravaged by fifty foot waves, and part of the country in the south has been under flood water for over a month. The forecast is that things aren’t going to improve anytime soon.
And when my football team, Manchester City, is scheduled to play at home and has a chance of going top of the league with a win, and then the match is cancelled on safety grounds, then you better believe that things are getting serious.
Although not making light of the destruction caused by 100mph winds, and the possible damage to property and injury people may suffer, amid reports of shoppers being blown over on the streets of Manchester yesterday afternoon, I couldn’t help but laugh at this photograph taken on Deansgate.
I can imagine Miss Unfortunate sliding 300 metres to the end of the street still clutching her shopping and that most useless of weapons in this type of weather: the umbrella. Or maybe that is not an umbrella but a baton, and this is just her part of a relay race?
But it is the look on the face of the other woman that really tickled me. The look of disbelief as she gamely tries to hold on to her bags, hold down her skirt, hold on to her dignity, hold onto the pavement.
Batten down the hatches people, and try to keep your feet on the ground. Spring is just around the corner.
Blow Down The Chimney And Make A Wish
I was recently going to do a post, but it seems the WordPress Gods are working against me.
I sat at my pc the other morning, as the much heralded first storm of Winter hit, and began with the line:
I love windy days
I never even got to apply the full stop when I heard a low, rumbling noise that turned into a loud crash. At first I thought it was the furniture blowing across the decking, then realised that we haven’t got any. Dur!
I looked out of the back window to see two young gardeners who were working in a neighbour’s garden peering over my fence. On seeing me they beckoned me to go outside, and told me that a chimney had just been blown off one of the roofs. Whose? My mum’s next door.
It had collapsed and fallen down on both sides of the house, along with the tv aerial, taking many roof tiles with it. I went in my mum’s-she hadn’t even heard it!
I had to go in once at 4.00am to switch her burglar alarm off as she slept through it. She has one good ear, and if she is lay on it neither megaphone nor medium can contact her. I just re-set it and came out, with all the bedroom lights on in the flats opposite as my mum slept on in darkness.
“Mam, you know that little run of bad luck you are going through at the moment, with your boiler and your washing machine? Well your chimney has just come down.”
She heard that one alright. It could have been worse, there could have been someone coming up the path at the time and been hurt, and she is insured. After preventing anybody coming to the door, above which many loose bricks were precariously balanced on the edge of the roof, and dealing with the over-stretched insurers, I returned back to my house. That last sentence was still there, hanging unfinished on the screen:
I love windy days
Irony is cool isn’t it?
I deleted it and then typed
I love lottery wins
I will keep you posted. No pun intended.
So I abandoned my post for that day. And today?
Well it’s my birthday, so I will take the day off. I will see you again soon though.
Weather and WordPress Gods allowing.
City Jackdaw 