Ophelia is among us
Tuesday, October 4th, 2011WHEN the US gets a hurricane, it tends to swing by our way a few days later.
Hurricane Ophelia is with us now. If I was more up on Hamlet, I’d have some witty quote at this point. What I can say is alas, poor Uist.
Ophelia had half the ferries and planes cancelled yesterday. Imagine that, marooned in the Atlantic and unable to get off your island. The hurricane puffed her cheeks and blew a force 10 with horizontal rain in every which direction.
She eased up this morning, so I dashed out for a walk. My neighbour was out too, taking the opportunity to tend his garden, but we both saw the leaden clouds approaching and cut our chat short.
Sure enough the nearest, most mean-looking cloud started to dump on me. Through squinty eyes, I saw a large bird of prey flapping over the loch. I couldn’t tell what it was, only that it had a black bar across its wingtips. It was mobbed by a couple of smaller birds.
I trudged on hoping that Mr Mac had his binoculars trained on me and would dash into the car to come and rescue me. But he didn’t. His eyes were trained on the computer, I reckoned.
It wasn’t so bad. The rain died down to a smatter and with my back to the wind I was blown home on Ophelia’s skirts.
Mr Mac said: “I was watching you and I was going to come and get you but it improved.”
His definition of ‘improved’ is rather different from mine, evidently.
