A Windy Struggle
All this high wind reminds me of 1968/9 when we had a bad storm in Glasgow with chimneys and any loose tiles and bits getting blown down. I had a friend, a small thin chap, a bit of a weed maybe, but with a real sense of humour that turned the following incident into a kind of Mr Bean event. He was wakened near dawn by his garage doors slamming open and shut and went out to fix it. It was raining so he put on a rain coat but was almost blown away by the storm with the coat flapping, took it off and carried on in his pygamas. The wind was blowing across the face of the garage and one door, the right hand side, was slamming but closed. He put down the bolt on the right side to stop it flapping and turned to deal with the other side. The wind was howling and by now he was soaked, cold and shivering but he only had the one door to close, so he pushed at it to close the damn thing. It was all right to begin with but as he pushed it out, the wind got at it and by the time it was straight out, it was flat against the wind and he only had enough strength to shove it an inch at a time between the gusts. The trouble was that when he got it to an angle it acted like a vane and pushed the gusts into the garage and loose cardboard boxes and things started to get blown around. He pushed it a little more and what happened next happened so quickly he only managed to work it out later. The wind rushing through the garage caught the right hand door, tore it off the bolt and flung it open. That sheltered the door he was pushing and he stumbled forward. The right had door then got blown back and the wind blew on his, pushed him out of the way and swung open again. By now it was growing light and his wife knocked on the window showing him a bottle, so he went in and had a bit of a dram. He put on dry clothing and struggled out into the tempest. He closed the right hand door, got the rubbish bin, put it in front of the door, filled the bin with bricks and other heavy things and turned to deal with the left hand door. Despite being tired out he managed to get ot closed and locked and dashed back into the kitchen for coffee laced liberally with brandy. He and his wife stood looking out of the window. He, grinning with satisfaction, she, gazing with shining eyes at her hero when the wind sucked the roof off.
Sullatober