By Roz Hartley
I sit here at my desk in the aftermath of Storm Bert and can see out of the window my patio furniture strewn across the lawn, several branches down and a small, plastic greenhouse which will be of no use to my seedlings next Spring. Such an innocuous name, Bert, but capable of major disruption. Trains cancelled, cars floating down the road near my village and no end of lanes shut due to trees down. Friendly Sesame Street character, he was not.
Apparently this habit of naming storms originated in the 1890s with a particular Australian meteorologist who entertained himself by naming storms after women or politicians that he didn’t much like. Well, whoever Bert was, I didn’t much like him either. But then neither was I a huge fan of the weather the week before Bert with plummeting temperatures and frozen windscreens. Getting up in the dark is bad enough without having to de-ice the car before you can go anywhere. One might be forgiven for thinking that November in the UK is worth leaving behind. Oh to spend Winter in the Caribbean or the Bahamas.
But actually, if we cast our minds back even further, the beginning of November was delicious. Autumnal colours and trees turning orange and red accompanied my journey down to the West Country for a long weekend with the family. As always when packing for a long weekend in the UK, there was a bit of everything in my suitcase. T shirts and sweaters, hats and scarfs, wellies and sunglasses and, of course, the wetsuit.
Even with the mild temperatures, the sea was just tipping over into unfriendly degrees centigrade – certainly unfriendly to bikini wearers. Although, as I donned the old neoprene (including feet and hands, thank you very much) I did pass much hardier folk than me, in their lobster-printed trunks and tropical-leaved swimsuits, discarding their towelling capes and running into the waves hand in hand. They weren’t in for long, but I was. I simply couldn’t drag myself out of the surf despite it being November. The sheer joy of body boarding or just hurling yourself into the foam brings a childlike exuberance that is impossible to suppress.
I defy anyone to jump around in the waves on a beautiful November evening (in a wetsuit – with hands and feet) whilst the sun sets around them, not to feel full of the joy of the world. And thank goodness for these moments. They stay with me when the ice sets so hard on the car that I can’t open the door or the wind blows so hard that the bench hits the fence and makes a panel cave in. Grab the good times by the scruff of the neck and re-live them when the storms blow! That’s what November teaches me but, if anyone does have a spare ticket for St Lucia, then I am free next November.
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