Do you remember that incredible storm?

Driving down to my Mum's I was actually in tears seeing the mighty old trees plucked from the ground and seeing the little homes of small animals and insects exposed to the air.

Even today I pass the upturned monsters - too big to remove.

I remember then thinking how much more powerful than anything is Mother Nature.

Oddly enough, I was just looking up a TV producer I was working with at the time, as we were on a deadline to have a soundtrack on his table by the next week, and we quite simply had no electricity to continue.
No mobile phones, and the landlines were down, we could not get in touch at all.

I had no idea on the first night, driving back from the studio, quite what I was driving through in my mini at the time, and that only up the end of the road some firemen were killed by a falling tree.

We were without electricity for the best part of the month and relied on local radio for train info etc, which we evntually used, travelling up to Virgin Video in Tottenham Court Road to deliver our work, after phoning in from a call box at Waterloo when we got there.

Then back home on the train to darkness and candles again, it was surreal.

We all had 80`s big hair at the time, and my sister was very jealous that I had managed to do mine without a hairdryer.

I don`t know what it was like for Londoners, it felt like the whole world was crashing down around us here, despite all the bereavements and destruction around us, sadly being a youngster at the time, I remember it as a time in which we had no electricity.

When our soundtrack and film came in at number one at the close of the episode,(Video chart!remember that?) it seemed extremely odd and still does.

Mart wrote:

We all had 80`s big hair at the time, and my sister was very jealous that I had managed to do mine without a hairdryer.



I was living in the North East near Hull. My Mum and I saw that infamous Michael Fish weather bulletin where he dismissed reports of a hurricane...

We didn't suffer too badly from it and were quite shocked at the sights we saw on the news... the damage was devastating and it stunned me that trees got uprooted. The only damage we had was some rooftiles being dislodged and blown off. I'll never forget that because our neighbours got their roof replaced after losing 5 tiles whilst we got nothing such was the difference in insurance companies! My Mum swore and cursed about that for a long time.

It was very windy but can't recall any other major damage or chaos in our neck of the woods.

Amazing to think that was now 20 years ago!

The roof of our car port went flying into oblivion that night, but that was the only damage to our house except for a couple of loose roof tiles.

A video I was directing had to be postponed as it mainly took place outdoors.

In fairness to Michael Fish, when he made his report the storm was heading away from Britain. Just shows how unpredictable nature can be.

In fairness to Michael Fish, although he read the forecast on that day, it was actually written by Bernard Davy, but Michael did not expose his colleague to the criticism but took it on the chin himself. I found this out on a recent trip to the bbc.

I was living in Cheshire at the time so don't remember the big storm, however I remember a big storm in 1989 in the south.

As Robbie pointed out, it was actually the start of many down here.
Seeing nextdoors greenhouse picked up and dumped into the garden behind was quite an experience, as was the roof lifting off a block of flats in the town centre which shut the town down one Sunday in the mid 90`s.

The fencing men do rather well!