Stormy anticipation

It's more or less dark now, this Christmas Eve, and I can no longer see the waves crashing over the pavement of the East Bay in Dunoon. I can, however, see the lights of our lifeline Western Ferries as a ship makes the crossing to The Other Side (we always think of it with capitals; somehow it seems to emphasise otherness...) after being off for several hours over high tide, and I can tell even without looking that the winds have eased off a bit.

 I have been fascinated for several hours now by this interactive map , of which this is a screen grab - taken just now, as the storm moves off to the north east. At the height of our cut-offness, we were, it appeared, living in the windiest part of the globe and I felt small and vulnerable stuck up here in my study looking out over the turbulent sea.

But now I can start to feel the excitement of Christmas Eve building in me as I contemplate the shock of leaving a warm house to head further up the hill to church, the thrill of the dark church and the candles, and the privilege of singing with our quartet that will open the Midnight Mass. For the past 39 years this has been my Christmas - the tension and the joy in the darkness - and only when it is over can I relax.

Kids, get that champagne on ice!

Back to the stone age?

Photo: Campbell Bryson

I'm indebted to (brave/foolhardy/dedicated) local photographer Campbell Bryson for the photo that  I'm too much of a wimp to go out and take for myself - this huge tree, blocking Argyll Street in Dunoon, is very close to home, but as I write the rain is once more battering down and I'm here instead of out there and .... and ....

And this morning brought home to me yet again how precarious our comfortable life is. We woke in the dark, some time before 7am, to hear an ominous crashing above our heads - and then there was a flash outside and the whole of Dunoon went dark. The torches were downstairs, and I found myself feeling my way to the kitchen to find one - walked into the long-case clock on the way - before trying, unsuccessfully, to sleep again. Daylight revealed our neighbour walking across the road carrying a long piece of ridging from - his roof? our roof? Could have been either, for his house and ours and the one at the other side of our block are all missing yards of the stuff, with the remaining bits sticking up at crazy angles. And now, as I said, the rain is back ... Let us not think on't.

The lack of power was interesting. We have a couple of gas fires, so the demise of the central heating pump wasn't quite the catastrophe it might have been, but there was no hot water and I had to boil water for tea on a little camping stove. We'd thrown out our stove-top kettle too, so it was in a pot ... And then there was the matter of the toast. I made toast. Barbecue tongs and the gas flame after the water boiled. Quite quick - but different texture and a tendency to go on fire. Better than the raw bread, however.

All this took so much time - and even with the decision not to wash up until we had hot water, the business of dealing with the wee stove, finding a suitable pot, refilling same, finding more candles ... it was almost time to think of doing it over again (for coffee) when the power came on. But not once had I thought of how I was missing my computer, nor wondered what I would do with the day - and I realised that the ordinary business of living could fill your entire waking life with activity if you had to boil every drop of water for drinking, washing, bathing, if you had to light your way with a candle or replenish an oil lamp.

As it is, I bet we have water coming into our roof-space right now, soaking wood and dripping dismally. I'm not going to think about it any more. I've just heard that the place we rehearse with 8+1 has lost part of its roof altogether. Maybe we could worry about that instead ...

Christie in a country house?

Having gone on about the storm brewing last night, I had to use this pic to demonstrate the hazards of life in these parts at this season - for are we not just out of the octave of the equinoctial gales? It was taken through the car windscreen as we sat on the Western Ferries coming home this morning, having forgone breakfast in our lovely hotel on Arran to catch the first ferry to run, just in case it was also the last.

But it is really of last night that I wish to tell. For after dinner, as we sat deep in squashy leather sofas beside a log fire, we were joined first by three jolly golfers and then by a couple from The South - all of us due to catch the ferry on the morn. I suppose it was the laptop that brought us together, as we could all see for ourselves the expected wind speeds on the met office site and the Cal Mac status reports. Mr B and I were modestly sipping espresso and nibbling the wonderful sweetmeats thoughtfully provided with it (just in case we perhaps had a tiny corner left), but the malt was flowing and the banter becoming more hilarious when we heard that the last boat of the day had been cancelled, and the first of Saturday, and the boat was lying overnight in Brodick. No-one knew if it would sail in the morning, and remarks like "It depends on who the captain is" did nothing to reassure.

It was, of course, typical Agatha Christie fare: the country house; the sense of isolation, of being cut off from the outside world; the contrast between the soft lighting and warmth and the howling darkness outside; the occasional interruption as some windswept traveller, gleaming with water, burst in at the door. One of our number would surely be dead by morning, in mysterious circumstances. Questions about occupation revealed a surgical instrument maker in our midst ... a banker ... an accountant ... surely there were sinister implications here?

Actually, no. At least four of us caught the first ferry together, having survived the night and the anxiety. But I caught no further glimpse of the Jolly Golfers. Perhaps they decided to stay and have that last game in the gale. I do hope so ...

Ancient Mariners again

Sometimes they get the weather forecast just right. And so it is today: they promised us gales overnight and into Saturday, and as I sit by the log fire in the hotel, after a wonderful meal, the wind is howling in the chimney and the talk is all of the cancelled Cal Mac sailings tonight and in the morning. And we're supposed to be leaving tomorrow afternoon. My attention keeps being drawn to the mutterings at the desk, where I can hear anxious conversations about trying to leave by earlier ferries, checking out at the usual time whatever, and I'm trying to concentrate on not fretting.

It feels strange being on such a large island and still depending so completely on Cal Mac ferries. I read in the Arran Banner today that Western Ferries are interested in starting a link here - what a Good Thing that would be. But we'll have to see what the morning brings. A guy in the bar has just opined that it's going to be a rammy in the morning.

Interesting, huh?

Not '68 then

We're still here. It didn't blow last night, and by midnight was more or less calm. I think the Met Office have been more careful to have us well alarmed since the 1968 storm, when I can remember we were given no hint of the terrifying night to come on the telly that Sunday evening. We were lucky - we lost a chimney pot, which crashed through the skylight but not the interior fanlight, and were kept awake all night by the trumpet-blasts of wind hitting the copper draught-excluder on our bedroom windows. (I remember my fury when I realised that my parents, whose room faced away from the wind, had slept all night.) But the morning showed the devastation all around us: tenements with half the gable-end walls pulled down as the chimney head fell; roofs with gaping holes which were subsequently left covered in tarpaulin for months - years, even - as Glasgow's builders struggled to deal with the damage. I walked to college (Jordanhill - and was I glad I wasn't on school placement after a sleepless night) marvelling at the lives laid bare for all to see - and realising that lives had also been lost.

But today is no longer red on the map, and it is merely miserable - dark, cold, sleety. A day, in fact, to waste a little time bamboozling your brain, or your eyes, or whatever combination of the two results in seeing your skin crawl after thirty seconds of staring at the computer screen. You can have a bash here, at eChalk optical illusions - I found the spiral pinwheel illusion the most disturbing, and I didn't try the gears one that threatens to make you feel sick - too easy, in my case.

As for me, I feel the need to revisit the game I played obsessively throughout my last year of teaching. It used to impress my S-grade boys when I asked for tips; my street-cred was sky-high. As too many of my readership are not 15 year old boys, however, and as the game itself is pretty old-hat nowadays, I will refrain from confessing any more. Guess away, kiddies!

Update: I've just found out that the storm in '68 fell on Sunday night, 15 January - so the equivalent of today, really. How satisfying.

Take action

This jolly little map indicates that we're having interesting weather. In fact, the red - which the astute will notice extends over the homeland of this blog - carries the caption "Take action" on the Met Office site I referred to yesterday. I've never actually seen the red over our neck of the woods since I started using the site, and was sufficiently intrigued to check its recommendations. They're actually pretty basic, to do with tying down the garden, putting the car indoors and not leaving your bed under a shoogly old chimney stack. (And if you're wondering: the last instruction is the least tampered with by my attempt at whimsical paraphrase)

What it doesn't warn you of is the danger of carbon monoxide poisoning or insanity induced by the shrieking of the CO alarm. A sudden down-draught from the chimney obviously caused a blow-back of gas-fire fumes; this particular chimney has always been subject to strange currents of air and used to fill the room with smoke in the old days. We've solved the insanity problem by removing the alarm to the hall and we've dispersed the fumes by opening a window - even though that is one of the "don't"s in the Met Office list.

There are compensations, however: I had a jolly time watching cars vanishing under the waves on the shore road at high tide, and noting that not only had someone left a white van parked on the seaward side of the road but also there were people obviously sitting in their parked cars with the lights on enjoying the thrills. I imagine they don't think of all the stones cast up by the waves.

Now it's dark, and we can't see much. The wind has fallen strangely silent in a way I find ominous; I fear it may be a case of reculer pour mieux sauter or something more scientific like the eye of the storm, for more and worse is promised. When I was a child in Glasgow, all I worried about was the possibility of being brained by flying slates off the tenements of Hyndland and Broomhill or the fanlight at the top of the close where we lived being shattered by a chimney pot, but these worries actually existed more in the minds of my parents. I found it exhilarating. Now I know that the worst storms wait till midnight to terrorise us and wreck our sleep, having first silenced the telly so that we have nothing else to think about.

I shall go out in the lull and tie down the garden. Or something.

Cut off

Woe, woe and thrice woe. This is one of the relatively few times when I feel cut off, living here on the wrong side of the Firth. The photo was actually taken a couple of days ago, when the sea wasn't causing travel problems other than sea-sickness, but today all our ferries have been off since mid-morning and it's now so dark (at four in the afternoon) that I can't see the waves any more.

And today I was planning on travelling. Not anywhere exotic, but a trip involving two ferries, to The College on Cumbrae. Now, instead, having spent the whole day hanging around waiting to see what would happen, I'm going to have to resurrect some chilli from the freezer and think about going in the morning. Very disappointing.

Worse still, the connction saga continues, with the added complications of our new telly and the Sky package. Microfilters or no, neither the installation of the Sky line nor our broadband connection have been behaving normally. Furthermore (I love that word - so portentous) I don't seem to be able to blog from flickr any more. And yes, I have updated my settings.

I might as well be living in a cave. I used to be good with an open fire ....