Getting serious
There’s a storm coming! In fact, there were two…
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What’s the best car you’ve ever had? Mine was a sandy-coloured 1977 Land Rover that I drove over road and dirt track in Tanzania. It was so beautiful. Yes, it broke down almost daily. Yes, passengers in the back were frequently dizzied by petrol fumes. Yes, it was a safari car that was not reliable enough to take to a safari park. But where others smelled burning rubber, I smelled only adventure. When I climbed up into the driver’s seat of a car both taller and older than me, I felt like I could go anywhere. And I did, until the next time the engine cut out/the handbrake stopped working/the axle broke/I drove into a ditch/I had a flat tyre (I’m just throwing examples into the air. Of course I didn’t drive my car into a ditch in my own driveway. That would just be silly).
Nowadays, I drive a far more sensible Citroen C3 in that particular shade of mint-green that everyone painted their kitchens a few years ago. It is both more powerful and more reliable than my Landy ever was, and I bomb up and down the motorway in it, fearlessly taking on those giant European lorries, leaving them all in the dust. Recently (six months ago), the car started to make some interesting noises, and Farmer Joe and I finally decided in the last couple of weeks that it might just be time to get to the garage. ‘We were supposed to get this maintained every 30,000 kilometres. So it should have been done at least twice by now.’ Farmer Joe shook his head sadly. ‘We are really not serious people.’
My immediate reaction to this statement was obviously to take huge offense. Excuse ME, I am a PARENT. I am a TEACHER. I read BOOKS. My sense of humour leaves me whenever I haven’t slept enough, which is ALL THE TIME. Of course I am a serious person. Then I realised that Farmer Joe had gifted me with a great new statement with which to mock him. We forgot to buy milk? We are not serious people. We left the washing in the machine overnight? So not serious. We ate fish fingers for dinner for the third time this week? Seriously, get serious.
However, something happened at the farm recently which made me realise that perhaps we really aren’t serious people after all. That something was Storm Nils. One Wednesday afternoon, Farmer Joe hurried inside. ‘There’s a storm coming,’ he said. ‘We need to get ready.’ (Visions of all of us in a storm shelter, as in Twister, flooded my mind. Would one of us end up battling a tornado to get the data to better predict future tornadoes? We would need a pick-up truck and a renegade approach to authority. But we don’t have a storm shelter. And God, I love that film.)
Here is a list of what we decided to do to secure the farm against the upcoming storm:
Close all of the shutters
Put away all of the garden furniture
Put the bins inside
Secure the greenhouse doors with ropes
Park the cars in a safe place
And here is a list of what we actually did:
Make dinner
Put children to bed
Go to bed ourselves
I was woken at 2am by one of the shutters banging against the wall outside. A nice repetitive thud approximately every 30 seconds. The wind howled around us and I felt simultaneously so grateful to be cocooned in safety with my children and so worried about the damage the storm would bring. The next morning, I woke early, diligently readying myself for work. The storm hadn’t really died down; driving at any kind of speed was going to be interesting. I steeled myself against the lashings of rain, wind and the debris of recycling that had flown out of the unsecured bin across the grass in front of the house. Feeling like Wonder Woman, I stopped the car halfway down the drive to pick up an errant branch that blocked my path… then noticed the enormous pine that was blocking me in. I wasn’t going to work. None of us were going anywhere.
The tree surgeons came and we were freed by the evening. It took a few days to feel normal again. At least five trees fell around the farm and the greenhouse doors ended up at a funny twisted angle. The river flooded and half of our little footpath was under water. We learned our lesson. When it comes to Mother Nature, one must get serious. Well, I say that, but a week later there was another storm, not damaging enough to get a name, but powerful enough to throw one of the shutters that we had failed to close from the first floor to the ground below. It’s quite something when you open the door in the morning and see a piece of your house in your garden.
So yes, perhaps nobody would describe us as serious people. Sleep-deprived and reckless and optimistic might sum it up better. But who wants to be serious anyway? Are YOU a serious person? Or do you, too, coast along hoping for the best? Or have you achieved the ultimate goal which is, of course, the happy medium? Let me know.