TUMULT

It’s been a tumultuous week. There was a  spectacular storm a few nights ago. The wind and rain actually lashed the house. Lashed. For a bit there I thought I was in the throes of that scene from The Omen where the priest is running to get to the safety of the church and all the elements are against him. The sky was black. The rain was like daggers. The wind felt strong enough to pick up the house and fling it down the road.

My neighbour’s gum tree, five metres tall and a beautiful thing, was uprooted. It fell at an elegant angle landing on the little studio room we have at the back of the house. Luckily, there was no damage, just a slight indentation on the flashing that runs around the side of the house.

My other neighbour has a two storey garage at the back of the house. Every window in it was smashed by the force of the storm. There was glass everywhere. It felt a bit like Armageddon. I idly considered looking for the numbers of Bruce Willis or Will Smith on Google. It appeared to be a situation that required a superhero type.

It was the aftermath of the storm that was the worst. It was as if all that weird, zinging electrical energy rewired the brains of everyone around.

My neighbour with the fallen gum tree called my landlord before he had even looked to see if our house was damaged and she panicked, sending the agent round to promptly have a go at me for not alerting her immediately.  I sulked which is what I used to do when I was a kid when I felt I had been wrongfully accused. ‘I don’t care if the whole house collapses in a heap,’ I sniped.

My neighbour with the broken windows inexplicably swept all of the broken glass into the laneway. A little boy kicking his ball fell on it and slashed up his hand. I heard the wailing from the garden and went out to see what was going on. I may have let it slip that it was my neighbour’s glass and the little boy’s Dad marched round and started shouting what for at my neighbour.

‘Who sweeps broken glass into the road?’ he shouted.

My thoughts exactly.

Then tonight there was a kerfuffle in the school behind my house. Bottles and eggs were thrown and there was a lot of shouting and carrying on. This was at 11PM. When I heard a couple of girls screaming I called the police. I spoke to one of the policewomen afterwards and she said they made four arrests. Not only had the teenagers smashed bottles and eggs, they had a crowbar and other tools which suggested they were going to try and break into the school buildings rather than just mess about in the grounds.

I felt momentarily proud of myself for doing my civic duty until I remembered my internet was playing up and that Nick had been in a very strange mood all day. He actually told me to SHUT UP. Me, his dear old mother.

Something shifted with that storm. It’s as if my part of the world is half-in, half-out of a parallel universe.

Hope it shifts back soon.

I feel like one of the actors in a particularly bad B-grade action/end of the world movie.

I just want a quiet life.