On the way back from Mum and Dad I popped into see Julian (me old mucker from University) and Leslie in Macclesfield who've just moved into a new house. This house is really easy to find even though it's probably only spitting distance from the old one. On the other hand it could be because of the wonders of Multimap and a postcode.
Young Amy (age 4) was the star of the show with constant requests
to Mum and Dad to tell Ian about this or that currently happening to
her: You tell him, honey.
Nooo! You tell him!
came the
reply.
When she did start speaking at length about something she dropped into a Mancunian accent which was quite funny to listen to. Julian insists she's to replace that with a good mid-Warwickshire accent (ie. none).
In the meanwhile my carefully (not) arranged plans to move my stuff tomorrow (Monday) lunchtime had gone complety up the spout with Ray (the man with a van) deciding it would be much more opportune to turn up at mine at 8am. All well and good but I wasn't going to get back home 'til gone 10pm and then have to pack. Oh dear.
In fact, shortly after getting home my guts decided on an explosive exit and I thought that going to bed was a better plan.
Measures on the Richter Scale![sic]
At 1am the country was rocked by an earthquake measuring a whopping 4.8 on the Richter scale centered on Dudley (Earthquake hits Dudley, Millions of pounds of improvements are made). So wimpy is such an earthquake that half the country slept through it. In my case I was awoken by the sort of shock wave in the air that you might get from slamming a door -- only I couldn't quite work out if I'd heard a door slam.
I then thought it might be subsidence and looked to see if the bedroom was falling off the house and then I thought that I might be being burgled. So I crept out of bed like a right scaredey-cat and inched my way around the house expecting someone to clonk me on the head at any minute.
Obviously, I knew it was an earthquake. Especially when they said so on the morning news.
Copyright 2002 Ian Fitchet. All rights reserved.