How to spin a storm

If, in the days after Storm Arwen, the north of England began to suspect that the south didn’t much care about it, that suspicion has by now hardened into a cert. Many thousands of homes in the north and in Scotland still have no power and, as I write this, Storm Barra has just arrived, with a forecast of 80mph gales and eight inches of snow.

In the south, there’s excitement about the weather — ‘Man the BARRA-cades!’ — and the possibility of a white Christmas. In the north, there are elderly men and women, exhausted, hanging on, day after dismal day in the bitter dark. The village in Northumberland where I grew up has now been without electricity for 12 days. No heat, no light, no access to the news. But Northern Powergrid have laid on a fish and chip van by the village hall, between 5 and 6 p.m.