Mexico notebook

Four a.m. Something was triggering the motion-sensor on the outside light. One minute, darkness, the next, a window-full of flailing palm leaves, bright with rain. I blinked for a bit, then remembered: hurricane! There was one on its way, we’d been told by Rudy, the beach barman the day before, a bruiser called Ernesto. But Rudy had been phlegmatic: Ernesto is category 1, no problem. iPhone said different. By the light of that terrible little rectangle I fed my fear with headlines from round the world: ‘Ernesto gathers strength and takes aim at Tulum.’ ‘Ernesto careens across the Caribbean towards Mexico.’ ‘Ernesto could devastate Yucatan.’ By morning, I was pale with terror; a victim of my own profession. Rudy explained again: the government will evacuate if Ernesto is a problem. Stop worrying! And yet: ‘Takes aim’; ‘hurtles’; ‘devastating force’. I paced the beach. The sky was black; the sea plain weird, flinging sudden waves right up the sand, ignoring the usual rules of incremental tidal creep.