Jeremy Clarke: Can’t we even manage a proper hurricane?

In the Spar shop I overheard someone talking anxiously to the woman on the till about an approaching ‘hurricane’. I had thought the fast forwarding sky was looking a bit apocalyptic, so we hurried back to the caravan and put the radio on and waited for the news. The most important thing to have happened in the world in the past 24 hours, apparently, was the death of the ‘influential’ former Velvet Underground member Lou Reed, the man who characterised his style of musicianship as: ‘One chord is fine, two chords is pushing it, three chords and you’re into jazz.’

The gathering storm was the second item. Hurricane-force winds were a possibility rather than a certainty. A disappointment, this. If we are going to have ‘violent storm-force’ winds, we might as well pay a little extra and have the full hurricane, I say. Then we’ll at least have something to say on our Christmas cards to friends and family in Australia to compete with their drought and bushfires.