We awoke this morning with the outside wrapped up in wild winds and the house creaking like an old barn. August is traditionally a time of wind though I suspect the peak gusts today are much stronger than the average,

Earlier I walked the garden, retrieving shoes, cushions and tarps that had been dislodged overnight. I collected a fair bundle of fallen branches and watched as wary birds attempted flight, and then thought again. Their more experienced brethren stayed put, anchored to sturdier branches, awaiting a subsidence in the emphatic chaos.

I invariably return to Ted Hughes masterful 'Wind' on such occasions, the 'winds stampeding the fields under the window', the 'blade-light...flexing like the lens of a mad eye.'

And yes, 'the skyline (is) a grimace/At any second to bang and vanish with a flap.' It is just so.