damage

This was Howards End, Littlehampton, the morning after the 'hurricane' of 15 October 1987. I'd been at the pub the night before and remembered phoning Leysin at around eleven and there was no sign of anything unusual happening. But just an hour or so later the wind woke me up and I spent the rest of the night terrified downstairs with the cat listening to slates crashing and watching trees bend over by about 70 degrees in the garden.

The next morning I walked round town to survey the damage. Being on the Sussex coast we were right in the firing line and places along the seafront suffered the worst damage. This entire row of houses was destroyed - they were of the old mews style with large front windows. The windows blew in and the wind then just took the roofs off.

The 'hurricane' led to me joining the Green Party and probably doing loads of stuff I wouldn't have done otherwise, good and bad.

1986 snowstorm

(29.1.1986)

I often ran into snow when I was driving professionally and this was one of the worst occasions. I'd dropped in Cheltenham and then had to go into south Wales. It was snowing a little at Cheltenham but not enough to worry me, so I took the shortest route - which turned out to be the highest and steepest. It was quite hairy with the lightly loaded lorry slipping a lot. It was never a good idea to stop in weather like this, but I couldn't resist snatching these shots at the summit of the road. A few miles on as the road descended it opened out to a wide valley and the snow completely disappeared and I was driving in green again.

durham floods 1986

This was a surprise. I was driving back in 1986 and stopped overnight at Durham. It was (and still is) a surprisingly scenic city with a dramatically located cathedral on the bend of the river. However on this day (26.8.1986) the river was suffering from excess water and was flooding all along the banks. A few drivers hadn't managed to move their cars in time!