Eunice

Lying in an overly warm hotel room, the window open a crack the sound of the wind transports me to my childhood. Whistling through the gap at a perfect Ab, punctuated in a rhythm that feels familiar and comforting because of its peril.

A severe ‘red’ weather warning is in force and they have named it Eunice. 

Well fitting windows have stopped any wind sounding like something that is about to lift you off to Kansas to meet the wizard. However, when I was a child, the slightest wind would wake me in a fit of anxiety. 

It would be tempting to do the old person thing and suggest that the news protests too much. To insist we had storms in our day and no one died (except there was that man who had a plank of wood blow off a truck and through his car window piercing his head but I think he survived) I do remember the Michael Fish storm in the late 80s and another in the early 90s where people did die and I worked with a woman whose husband was swept away and his body never recovered when he was sea fishing in choppy waters. 

The new fad for naming storms is interesting. Eunice is a peculiar choice. It makes you think of a sweet old lady and I wonder if that it to calm our anxiety or to give people something to joke about later. 

Nina Simone’s real name is Eunice and I wouldn’t want to mess with her.

The only other Eunice I’ve known of was a little old lady that lived in a ramshackle bungalow on our street. It was a way down the road opposite the sweet shop. She lived there with her ‘sister’, Myrtle. They could have been sisters but Mum always spoke about their sisterhood in speech marks. I didn’t know them at all. I never saw them even once. Their garden was overgrown, the paintwork peeling and as far as I know, they never left the house. Then one day the bungalow burnt down. Maybe Eunice had left the gas on. Maybe someone disapproved of their comfortable shoes. The rumours were rife. 

“Two old ladies burnt to death there!” 

Children whispered and pointed as they came out of the shop clutching a paper bag filled with black jacks, flying saucers, sweet tobacco and fruit salads. 

This Eunice doesn’t worry me too much, as I’m on holiday and so while you are chasing your wheelie bins around the garden I will be hunkered down in a nice hotel, swimming , eating and reading.