The world from my window

There was a storm on Tuesday night that threatened to turn our solidly-built house completely inside out. I was huddled up so tightly, I expected at any minute to see the jacaranda tree walk hand-in-hand through the front door with the oleander in a kind of Arthur-Rackham-meets-Edward-Lear-type moment. 'Give us shelter,' they would plead, as I fought off an inexplicable urge to tidy up the house before letting them in. Well, I wouldn't want them gossiping to the palm tree. I wouldn't trust him an inch. Rain poured through the end windows, drip-plop-torrent. The wind roared and whistled down the chimney in such a terrifying way that, for a split second, I turned to see the shadow of Mr Grigg and thought it was the convict Abel Magwitch from Great Expectations . I shuddered. And then the thunder cracked, splitting the sky in two after a great flash of light like an Olympian paparazzi ready to pounce on the world's greatest scoop. It rained and rained an...

Twenty two years ago, I was digging a hole in the garden for some nicotianas. A little while later, I sat down in the house and had some leftover spaghetti bolognese at six o'clock. It must have been off, I thought, because I got indigestion pretty soon afterwards. I rang my friend and said: 'I think I'm all right but I feel a bit weird. I wonder if you ought to come over?' She was round like a shot. Because, you see, I was a week away from my 'expected date of confinement'. 'I'm sure sure it's nothing,' I said to my friend. 'You idiot,' she said. 'You're in labour.' So we flew over the top road, up and down, past the glorious views of the sea, the grassy knolls, the tree-topped hills and the patchwork blanket of fields, the Devil's Nine Stones, the old radio station and a roundabout called Monkey's Jump. I walked about a bit in hospital but nothing much happened, until I opened a magazine with a full page,...