It was unexpected but not entirely without warning. The weatherman had laughed on TV at the suggestion from someone that they had heard a hurricane was on the way. We all thought what a load of rubbish; this is England for goodness sake! Oh, how wrong we all were and blissfully unaware of what was to come when we went to bed.

The year was 1987 and at that time in my life I was still living at home with my parents. We lived on a peninsular of land called Shoreham Beach in West Sussex. It was very flat and very open to the elements, and we were just meters away from the pebbly beach across the road.

That night in October seemed a little blustery outside but nothing more than usual. On normal days I had often stepped out of the front door to have nicely brushed hair swept around in an array of startled tangles before even reaching the garden gate.

The hurricane struck in the early hours of the morning. I was tucked up in bed, snug and warm when all hell let loose. For a moment I was in that place between dreamland and reality, struggling to comprehend my surroundings. All I knew was that my heart was thudding in my chest and something must have caused it. A great crash had brought me sitting up in bed in the darkness but I couldn’t work out what was going on.

The wind was screaming and howling outside my bedroom window and I could hear The English Channel crashing and raging across the street. I had never heard anything like it before. My bedroom door flew open, my light blazed on making me blink against the sudden onslaught of brightness.

"Are you okay?" Dad asked me quickly.

"I think so," I replied finally coming out of my shocked daze.

Seeing I was intact, Dad vanished from my room just as fast as he had appeared. I could hear that the whole house was awake by now. My parents were talking on the landing in low urgent tones, and my young brother whimpered with sleepy bewilderment. I took a glance out of my bedroom window and saw a world that was threatening to rip up out of the earth and fly off down the road.

"What´s going on?" I asked joining my family on the landing.

"Bad storm, that´s all," Mum told me, as she had tried to smile reassuringly.

We could tell this was no ordinary storm, this was something very different happening here and there was no chance of getting back to sleep again. With renewed energy and a thrill of fear and excitement we all bundled up in dressing gowns and went downstairs.

The lights began to flicker and Mum went into survival mode and made up a flask of tea. If all else failed we’d still have our tea to keep us going. She did it just in time because moments later the electric went and we were plunged into darkness.

"Where did we put those candles?" Mum said.

The hunt for candles began. Giggling with nervous exhilaration and floundering in a world that suddenly seemed like an episode of The Twilight Zone we located them and lit them. We stood and looked at one another in wavering candle light as we listened to the storm outside.

Crashes and bangs seemed to surround us and we could only imagine what was happening out there. Shattering glass added an edge to the destruction. It sounded like someone was having fun in the china section of a department store. Just as Mum had gone into survival mode, Dad leapt into hero mode.

"I´ll just take a peep outside and see how bad it really is," he said. Nobody wanted him to go.

"Be careful," Mum called after him.

He came back pretty quickly, with reports of glass and roof tiles flying around. The glass porch by the backdoor had taken a right beating, and the stone garden wall had collapsed and was lying in a heap on the driveway.

The news of this kind of destruction was quite sobering and thrilling excitement gave way to quiet fear as we grouped together in the living room to wait out the storm. It seemed to go on and on forever, the night drawing itself out as long as it could. We all feared that we might lose the house windows as things continued to beat up against them. Fitful sleep took over for a short while but was little relief.

Gradually the sounds of the storm began to subside as light dawned. Never before had the dawn been a more welcome sight. Like zombies, we emerged from our houses, alongside our neighbours, to face the damage. Someone must have had a crazy party out here during the night and had forgotten to clean up afterwards. Plants of all shapes and sizes had been strewn all over the place. Walls had crumbled. Roof tiles had been stripped from above us and now lay smashed to pieces everywhere. I remember thinking there couldn´t possibly be any left on the roof, but hey, the washing line was still standing! We all stood around in dazed wonder.

"Why is that fireman coming up our path?" my little brother asked and some animation returned to his shell-shocked face.

We watched the fireman come up the garden path. His bright yellow helmet dominating our vision, and I can remember thinking how serious the storm must have been for the Fire Department to be out and about.

He told us that our chimney had fallen and crashed through the roof on the other side of the house, which we hadn´t seen yet. That must have been the crash that had initially woke me and brought my Dad charging into my room to see if I had been okay. Dad and the fireman went into the house and were gone for quite a while. When they came back outside to us, they both looked grave and the fireman told us not to go in any of the rooms on that side of the house. The chimney had tumbled through to the loft but was being prevented from toppling any further by an old worktop my Dad had stuck up there. The worktop was threatening to give way at any moment and then nothing would stop the chimney from crashing through the house.

My brother´s and my own bedroom were right beneath the chimney. Contemplating what could have been if that old worktop hadn´t been there sends a shiver down my spine. We were the lucky ones, our situation could have been so much worse; many people had far more damage to their houses than us. We are so small in the face of Mother Nature. She could squash us whenever she wanted to. Even now, after all the years, when the wind gets up a bit I start to feel nervous. I don´t think that feeling will ever go away.

But we survived; we survived a hurricane right on our doorstep. Peace seemed to wash through all of us on that morning after, as if we had been touched by some kind of divine power that had kept us safe through the peril ... or maybe it was the tea!


© Carolyn Eddy 2003