Thirty years ago to this day (the 27th (I may be a few minutes late!), we had been in our current house in Cornwall for six weeks. That day, we had the most ferocious wind we'd ever experienced. It stripped dozens of slates from our roof, wrecked the guttering at the front of the house and demolished our 18'x12' greenhouse. Having been used to town life all our lives, we were too scared to go outside that day. Roof slates were flying everywhere! A bloke who was a teacher at my new school, who I hardly knew, spent a whole day helping me to pick up broken glass from the greenhouse. Some of it was fifty feet away. He's a lifelong friend now, his eldest son being the same age as my son, then in the same class at the local primary school. I still find bits of glass in my garden from that event.

We had fixed up the buildings insurance but hadn't even paid the first premium, but they still paid up! We had more wind damage in the October 1987 storm, the Burns Day Storm in 1990 and in another big blow two weeks after the Burns Day Storm. Since then, some entertaining storms and a few slates blown off, but nothing like in them good ol' days!