Not so wild ...

I've just been watching the news - all these poor people being evacuated from flooded homes - and comparing life in their valleys and riverside communities with the trials and advantages of living here. This is the view from my bedroom this morning: sun glinting off the white horses on the Firth of Clyde on which the redoubtable Western Ferries were still running. The tide is fairly low at this point, so the waves are long but unthreatening on the coast road, and the wind, though gusty, isn't terribly strong.

By early evening, however, the tide was in and the news came through that to people here warns that the weather really is bad: Western Ferries went off for the rest of the evening. The sea was pounding on the sea wall again, and the gusts are threatening to tear off a bit of our roof. (This has happened in the past: I've lain in bed listening to a huge length of ridging thrashing about above my head until it tore itself free and plunged like a javelin into the neighbouring garden ...) I know that parts of the low-lying coastal areas have been flooded, and that to the south both Brodick (on Arran) and Millport (on Cumbrae) have sea on playgrounds and putting greens.

Despite the inconvenience of disrupted travel, there's a lot to be said about living on the side of a hill with only the thinnest layer of soil on the rock. But when I lived in Glasgow, I can only recall one time when I felt threatened by the weather - the storm of 1968, when whole tenements lost their roofs and their gable ends as chimney stacks blew off altogether. I remind myself of that when my thoughts become too apocalyptic ...