It was 20 years ago today...

The famous UK Hurricane, October 15 1987. I was a student at the time, working my year out in Croydon, Surrey. I was living in a bedsit, and remember being woken up in the middle of the night by the high winds. As is often my wont, I worried a little about what it might be like if the roof got blown off the building, or a tree came through the window. Then I decided if something like that happened then there's not a lot I'd be able to do about it, so no point sitting up all night worrying.

I remember I overslept, because the storm had cut the power and my clock radio alarm didn't go off. I woke in a panic, and rushed to get to work. I travelled to work on the bus at the time, and when I got to the main street, I found trees on the road, shop signs sprawled all over the place, roof tiles on the road and so on. Of course the buses wouldn't be running, so I found a phone box and called in to the office (remember, no mobile phones in those days!)

I was told that there wasn't a lot going on, but to come in anyway if I could. Work was only a few miles from where I was living (maybe three, three and a half), so I walked in. I got there about 11am, only to discover that although they had power, the current was fluctuating and they didn't want to risk switching the servers on. So my colleagues and I had a relaxing day at the office and spent a couple of hours in the pub at lunchtime. Actually this wasn't unusual as we worked flexitime we took short lunch breaks during the week and had a two-hour blowout on a Friday!

I can't remember too much about the following few days, presumably it took a little while to clear away all the debris and for everything to get back to normal, I think by the following Monday I was able to get to work as normal on the bus...

And now that I've written all that, it doesn't sound all that impressive! We had some high winds, some trees got blown down, I walked to work and spent two hours in the pub... h'mmmm.....