The Howling Wind

The weather has been very windy recently. Cold, wet and windy on Thursday. Warm, sunny and windy yesterday. All of that today. Such is the nature of the British summer.

My office is high up on a hill. I sit on the third floor from the top. Fantastic views, but my how the wind howls up there. I've likened it to a ghost army, banshees wailing, Nazgul screeching... You can feel the building move slightly as the wind batters and slams against it.

As it is summer the windows have been flung wide open all over the building. The wind drums sweet rattly music on the metallic blinds. The draughts that wend their way up the stairwell cause shivers down the spine. In the offices doors and windows slam shut. Papers flap and rustle in as the breeze touches them. And the wind continues to howl. Oh how it howls.

At home its howl is much calmer, less persistent, less raucous. It still makes its presence known. It makes the curtains dance. It occasionally pushes plant pots over. And it is always attempting to get into the recycling boxes to send plastic bottles and cans whirling in a mini Oz-like twister around the garden. And it softly howls and whistles and sings, edging its way around the Victorian sash windows, creeping through the gap above the back door.

Now a cat joins in this singing. It sits on the shed of a nearby garden and then jumps up onto a window ledge, and there it mews plaintively. "Let me in, please let me in. Let me in like the wind. Let me in." It mews, it cries, it whines, it howls.

I turn back to the hob where the bean chilli is ready to be served for dinner. I dance with the ladle, spinning around the kitchen to find plates and cutlery as Orbital's take on the Doctor Who theme plays from my laptop. And the fridge freezer begins its ceremonious howl. Its strange juddering squeaking, creaking howl. The wind, the cat, Orbital. The fridge freezer wants in. And I dance to this strange music, caught momentarily in one of my bizarre daydreams.