Earthquake in Wales...

The earthquake took place at 4.16 on Wednesday, 29^th May. It measured around 4 on the Richter scale and took place somewhere on the Llyn peninsula between Aberdaron and Nefyn or further out in the North Sea. It didn’t last long and was felt as far away as Southport, Dublin and the Isle of Man.

Yes, my very own disaster movie. This is an eye witness account. Well, ear witness to be more accurate.

It sounded like the corner of the cottage had fallen off, a huge piece of masonry dropping to the gravel fifteen feet below. I had been walking my white terrier in the park when it happened. I was on my way to meet some old colleagues and for once I had some good news; my book had been accepted, I was assured of a best seller, and my offer on my Greek island was going through. All was well with my world and I basked in the sunshine. Then the incident happened.

Yes, it sounded like the corner of the cottage had fallen off. I lay under my early morning covers as the walls boomed and the bed trembled, the electricity wires above my head humming like violin strings plucked by a stormy wind - there was no wind though, was there? I awoke immediately my little Timmy running off into the grey twilight of my dream. The thunder under the ground only lasted about fifteen seconds, then silence until suddenly every bird in the world decided to start singing. I jumped out of bed convinced that the heavy chimney stack had fallen or that a drunken farmer had driven his silage wagon into our roadside wall.

We were all awake and up, Holly and Gaynor as confused as I. ‘What was that?’ I think that I knew immediately that it was an earthquake - well, we do have a cottage in the most earthquake prone area of Britain – but I checked anyway. There were no huge cracks in the walls, no piles of rubble in the lane beneath our windows, no snapped-off jet engines in the field across the way. Hurriedly pulling on a T-shirt and shorts, aware that my uncombed hair made me look like a madman, I went outside to be greeted by the pale grey pre-dawn light and the singing of the panicked birds.

I looked around; nothing. Not a fissure or a loosened stone, no jagged chasm in the road, the telegraph poles still stood, the roof remained on the cottage; only the sound of the birds and the bleating of running sheep to remind me that something unusual had happened.

Going back inside I noticed the mug smashed upon the kitchen floor and then the hairline crack in the bathroom wall. We hadn’t escaped entirely Scott free after all.