We saw Storm Dudley approaching, due to hit Scotland and the north of England. We were worried for the friends we have in the north, and were worried again when Storm Eunice followed on behind Dudley and was due to hit Scotland and the north again. We were under a yellow warning for high winds, and then an amber warning. We woke up on Friday morning to find that Eunice had drifted south and we were under a red warning – danger to life.
We didn’t go outside much. We have several large trees in and around our garden, and we know that some of the trees next to our land are very large and very dead. The wind came in from the south west, so that the birch tree next to the drive was being blown directly towards the house. We’ve felled trees – we know how heavy live wood can be. That birch is taller than the house, and it would have carved a slice into our bedroom roof if it fell.
We could see the trees thrashing outside. The walnut tree has three trunks from its base and is over a century old, and the three trunks were waving like wheat stalks in the wind. When the wind swung around to the west, we could hope that the birch would just miss us – we’d get a walnut trunk through the front door instead. Nice. Maybe we could use the wood to replace the door.
The storm diminished and swept out to the coast and out to bother the North Sea, and we nipped out to see what the damage was. The wind was still strong and the trees were creaking, so we kept it brief and were ready to run. Twigs and small branches down, but otherwise all was secure. The enormous cedar to the east of the house had spat three small branches into the front garden, but we’d fared better than our neighbour, who had to go out at the peak of the storm to clear a branch from his conifer off the main road. The work we’d done to keep the cedar away from the power cable years ago was worthwhile; even at the worst of the storm, the cable was untouched.
Saturday morning, we did a more thorough patrol. A tree I’d suspected was dead had been uprooted and was propped against a clump of coppiced beech, rocking slightly on its base. A big elm in our neighbour’s garden had fallen away from our shared fence and into his garden. A dead maple on our southern hedge had uprooted itself neatly and fallen squarely into our garden, and a tree we hadn’t even noticed as dying was cracked jaggedly at the base and only held upright by having its branches threaded into a neighbouring tree.
Storm Franklin hit us on Saturday afternoon – another named storm, though it suffered from comparison to its big sister (“60 mph winds! Bah, just breezy!”). While the record gust for Eunice was held by the south coast – 122 mph – the winds here were strong enough to cut power to thousands of homes and bring down centuries-old trees – often right into house roofs or onto cars, and Franklin was the last straw for a few more.
We got off far more lightly than in 2014, when our power was off for five days – we had a solid two hours without power, followed by days of sudden brief cuts, but so far we’ve had electricity most of the time. Luckily. The 28 Plays Later challenge doesn’t allow for technical difficulties like dying computers or power cuts, so if I didn’t submit one play every day by 10am, I’d have failed to complete the top (timed) level of challenge. They are flexible, accepting photos or PDFs of handwritten plays emailed to them, but without mobile coverage or WiFi even that was out. I could have driven a dozen miles to a free WiFi hotspot and emailed off the play, if the roads were clear of trees and not flooded (yup, flood warnings too!)
So far, touch wood, all good. The 28 Plays crew have asked us to write a zarzuela, a libretto, a musical stripped of music, a play inspired by Dolly Parton and a riff on the number two, among other bizarre things. I’m still starting each night with a brief and no ideas at all – I posted on their FaceBook group once that I was coming up blank on tonight’s brief, and the admin replied that at least I had a great title and to start from that. And yes, I did use that title. So far, I have put in a play each day by the deadline of 36 hours after the brief is posted, although during the storms I was up till 4am writing to make sure I could submit before the power went off again. It’s been fun, it’s been like being the ball in a bagatelle machine, and it’s left me with ideas for March and onwards. That’s the whole point.
Tonight’s brief is in, and right now I have no idea what to write. Give me time. Another 35 hours to go before it’s too late.
Julia Chalkley 