blown inside out

Tonight is a crazy wind, air energy gone mad. After the literary journalism workshop this morning I rushed home because I had been a bad Mum and not taken Freddie for a walk before leaving. He greets me with the full force of his enthusiasm; wagging his whole body. At the hint of me reaching for his lead he pants excitedly, runs round in tight circles. He pulls me out of the door and we're off and racing. We lunge forward into the weather - I take a peak over my shoulder and notice more storm clouds gathering over a feverish sea. Enough time for our walk before the onslaught I calculate. Rugged up and ready we are buffeted up the street with the wind a chaotic roar up our rear. The street is littered with leaves and branches and small cones that have been flung from the pine trees up by the school. As soon as we enter the park I realise that I have sadly misculculated the approach of the next squall and that the umbrella is sadly not up to the task of protecting me from the force of the sudden amplification and power of a relentless ferocious gale. We turn into the maelstrom; in one hand I sieze hold of a rapidly disintegrating and distorted umbrella that has developed a life of its own, in the other I am tugged this way and that by Freddie who has sensed a weakness. Now a slanting sheeting rain comes in waves across the suburb drenching my pants that are blown cold against my legs. It goes on and on as we plunge homewards with no vision past the tattered umbrella held grimly, shieldlike. As is the nature of squalls, they are quick to arrive and quick to depart - by the time we turned into our driveway a restless patch of blue sky and a pale sun whisked across the sky, flashing and dazzling in the puddles and lighting the dark streams that surged and gurgled down the side of the road. I chuck the umbrella in the bin, towel dry the dog and let myself into the blessed sanctuary of home for a restoring cuppa.