SO, last Saturday. Storm Kathleen. Status Orange weather warnings for five counties and high wind warnings in force for the country. The national crisis management team on alert.
Storm Kathleen was gonna be “dynamic”. By mid-to-late afternoon some 34,000 homes, farms and businesses were without power, mostly in counties Cork, Kerry, Galway and Mayo, all of which were under a Status Orange wind warning due to gale force southerly winds. Flight disruptions. Ferry disruptions. Delays all round.
And for once. Just this once, we didn’t get hit. Couldn’t believe it.
I cautiously poked my nose out the door around 9am. A bit of drizzle. A bit of a breeze.
“Am I imagining things?” I asked my husband.
He wasn’t sure.
We stepped out.
The air was mild. The breeze was strong enough, but not that strong, I thought.
Looked like Storm Kathleen had given us a pass.
“Will I chance the shopping?” I wondered.
He wasn’t sure.
“Ah, I might as well,” I said. “Looks okay to me. I’ve things to do tomorrow.”
“Be careful driving,” he said. “Just in case there’s trees down on the road or anything.”
He was going to use the morning to get the fireplace ready for that little solid fuel stove we were putting in, he said.
He might as well get started on it now.
“Oh, right,” I said, gathering my bag and keys. “Is that a big job?”
No, he said.
“D’you need help clearing out the room or anything?” I asked.
Naw, not a bother, he said.
“Nothing to it.”
So I went. The butcher said one customer who said she lived on top of a mountain, had lost electricity. But she lived on the top of a mountain. He’d driven in to work from Skibbereen that morning without a problem, he said.
The supermarket car park was noticeably quieter than usual when I arrived shortly after 10am. Just a few trolleys in the aisles and no queue at the cash desk.
I got the shopping done in jig time and was home before 11am.
When I hauled the bags into the kitchen, something was different.
I felt grit in the back of my throat.
The air was cloudy with dust.
There was a slow, dull thud, thud, thud sound coming from next door.
I put the last of the bags down.
I went into the sitting-room.
The beautiful stone fireplace, its surrounds and its raised hearth were in smithereens.
Thud. Thud.
I looked around.
Thud.
The large bundle of worn-out bedsheets and washed-out duvet covers I had donated for the covering of furniture during indoor DIY work were in a heap on the sofa.
Thud.
The rug, the bookshelves, the curtains, the armchairs, the sofa, the ornaments, the tops of the pictures and presumably, the curtain poles too and the curtains, were covered with dust and grit.
I gasped. I gaped. Speechless.
Then I put my hands to my head. And screamed.
My husband rested the enormous sledge-hammer he was wielding on the floor, next to, I noticed, a huge iron bar and some big kind of mallet thing.
He removed his headphones, and turned around irritably.
“What’s wrong with you?” he asked.
I pointed, speechlessly.
“And?” he said.
“You never said anything about destroying the fireplace! I thought you were just making a bit more room in it for the stove,” I cried.
I gestured around the room.
“Why didn’t you cover everything with the sheets first?”
Yerra, he’d got a bit carried away, he supposed.
He’d just started, he said distractedly, and then he’d kept going.
“But why didn’t you use the sheets?” I repeated shrilly.
Christ, look, he had plenty other things to do with his Saturday besides getting the damn fireplace ready for my new stove.
“MY stove?” I gasped.
I was stunned by the sheer injustice of it.
“I never wanted a stove!
“You were the one who wanted the stove! You said all the heat from the fire was going straight up the chimney.”
“I just wanted new curtains,” I wept.
“And a few new cushions. And maybe a new rug.
“I loved the open fire. And now you’ve destroyed the place.”
He had enough going on without listening to my panic attacks, he observed coldly.
Headphones back on him. Thud. Thud.
I stalked out. I put away the shopping.
I thumped vegetables and milk and cheese and yogurt into the fridge. I slammed cupboard doors. Hard.
My shoes left dusty footprints everywhere I trod.
Finally, I went for a long, calming walk.
When I came back everything was covered with old bedsheets. He had wiped it all down with a damp cloth first, he said hastily, before I opened my mouth.
The wooden floor was free of grit.
The rug had been hoovered and rolled up.
“Sorry if I was a bit grumpy there,” I said.
“Oh, I didn’t notice,” he said airily.
I looked out the window into a clear blue sky.
Ah, but Storm Kathleen didn’t miss us after all.
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