I had a lovely relaxing Christmas with my parents. Lots of good food, and a chance to read some good books. (Ron Butlin’s “The Sound of My Voice” and the easier-going “The Little Prince” by St Antoine de Saint Exupery).
Chilled out. No hanging upside down, no running, no step classes, no rock-climbing. Nothing remotely tiring or death-defying!
And then at around 10:45 on Boxing Day the whole house shook violently, then shook again. My mum, dad and I leapt out of our seats and stared at each other. As you do. Clearly the house hadn’t shaken. Houses don’t shake. Well, not usually.
Then my dad (master of the worst-case scenario) suggested that maybe a truck had driven into the side of the house. He and my mum rushed outside while I went to get my mobile so I could phone an ambulance as obviously SOMEBODY out there had to be bleeding to death (hmm, maybe I also have the worst-case scenario gene).
We rushed outside and saw.. nothing. No-one. No sounds, no movement. More like a nuclear winter than a car crash. Nothing visibly wrong with our house, nothing apparently wrong with the house next door, the chimney of which was smoking peacefully (although my dad did briefly wonder if the chimney had exploded). Then my dad wondered if the ICI plant in town had gone up. That is a chemical plant, could be nasty. But nothing to be seen in that direction either. Or maybe a lorry had crashed into a bridge further up the road, but with enough force to make our house shake? Finally my father came up with the unbeatable worst-case scenario that it was a terrorist attack and Glasgow had gone. Whew. That’s scary. He then tuned the scenario-scanner down several notches and settled on the more manageable theory that a lorry somewhere had crashed into something. So he phoned the police. And this is where the good stuff happens.
Good Thing #1: It was an earthquake, 3.5 on the Richter scale. This makes it “significant” in UK terms. However, nothing and nobody had been damaged.
Good Thing #2: The person taking calls for the police was a neighbour who recognised my dad’s voice. How nice is that, to get a personalised service from the emergency services?!
Good Thing #3: I really appreciate the UK and how gentle it is to us. We hardly ever have to deal with tidal waves, hurricanes, earthquakes, droughts. We moan a lot about the weather but its generally fairly benevolent.
Good Thing #4: After Christmas I could divert all the boring questions about “what did you get for Christmas” by telling them we had an earthquake. I did get lots of nice things for Christmas, but that doesn’t make for a very good story!
(PS I don’t buy The Sun newspaper and don’t recommend it, but they do have a way with headlines, so the title of this blog is a quotation from the Sun)
