I vividly remember October 15, 1987. As a teenager and having just watched Karate Kid 2 (which was not as good as numero uno), I decided to have my own attempt at being Sussex's Daniel-son in a leisure centre in Hastings.

Mother looked frantic as she picked me up: me in all the gear but with no idea and her with her Orange Daf, which was the height of automobile fashion back int’day. As we walked along the seafront to the jalopy, the wind nearly knocked me off my feet as I struggled to stay upright, and she struggled to control a car without ABS or power steering.

We learned, the next day, that we had been in the very centre of the great storm, and I for one didn’t blame Michael Fish. In those days we were more foolhardy, braver, and less easily spooked by tales of impending doom. If Fish had got it right, we would simply have shrugged and hoped for the best, which is what we did anyhow when he was proven so drastically wrong.

 

Handout photo issued by National Trust dated 16/10/1987 of Emmetts House and Garden, Ide Hill in Kent shortly after The Great Storm of 1987 which detroyed 95% of its woodland. Issue date: Friday February 18, 2022.

Handout photo issued by National Trust dated 16/10/1987 of Emmetts House and Garden, Ide Hill in Kent shortly after The Great Storm of 1987 which detroyed 95% of its woodland. Issue date: Friday February 18, 2022.

 

The low point was having to sleep in the living room with my father who was having kittens as he searched frantically to check the house insurance had not expired while we watched every fence panel and greenhouse pane go with the wind. Living on a cliff, my bedroom window, visibly bowing in the middle as it was pounded, survived, but the clear up was long, arduous, and lasted weeks.

Surveying the scene the following morning with my brother on our BMX Mag burners, there were hundreds of trees down, scores of houses missing a roof, and cars were in the most peculiar positions. Flooding was rife and the Pett Level campsite was like an inner-city swimming pool, albeit littered with the flotsam of caravan parts.

And then we fast forward a few decades: the last time I remember such a storm being touted was whilst we were in Cornwall a few years back.

News outlets over-dramatised the upcoming freak weather event and I consoled myself the evening before, in the Harbour Inn, Porthleven, with a score of national rag photographers who had been sent to get a shot of the waves crashing over the church.

Awaking the next morning, I stumbled out the front of the house to survey the scene: It consisted of one solitary dustbin lid sitting in the road, which had come loose from its moorings. The event was never mentioned again by the press. It was as if the hype hadn’t happened, and we just cracked on as we were until the next time.

And now the next time is here with Storm Eunice: as I write this she is at her peak fury, and we have just travelled back from a half term break in central London. We have faced days of fear and doom mongering nonsense, not too different from the noises made about Brexit, or Covid and, despite their best efforts to scare us otherwise, as expected, it simply didn’t happen. Yes: it was windy, and some trees came down. I ‘lost’ a few fence panels, as did many of you, but was it as bad as we were relentlessly led to believe?

 

Trees fell and train journeys were disrupted by Storm Eunice

Trees fell and train journeys were disrupted by Storm Eunice

 

Would you have gone out flying a kite in this?

National news outlets, in the age of hyper competition have a vested interest you see: they ramp the fearometer up to 11 and then hope that something bad happens (by the law of averages it has too) before writing relentlessly about the one person who died after getting hit by a falling tree in Arundel or Flintshire.

Yet, as we walked to South Kensington station earlier today (shut due to the storm) we saw five dustbins toppled over, a few branches and a bin lid. I mentioned to my wife: it's hardly storm Katrina or Haiti, is it?

Collectively we need to grow a spine. We feed off fear and then, when the catastrophe does not emanate, we justify our cowering in the corner actions with the ‘better safe than sorry’ mantra. What we should really be doing is showing some resolve, putting on a warm jacket and making use of the kite we bought a few years ago that has been gathering dust in the airing cupboard, as it champs at the bit for a day just like today.

  • Brett Ellis is a teacher

Was the media reporting overhyped or was it safer to stay indoors? Email editor@watfordobserver.co.uk