The Storms.

Hi there.  I live next to the sea in the middle of the countryside in West Cork, Southern Ireland.  We get some terrible storms from the Atlantic from November to March.  Today is no different and the wind is swirling round the house and the rain is lashing against the windows and I still haven't repaired that over flowing guttering.  To quote Archie Sparrow (the character from my funny book about baling string):

"I wouldn't put a milk bottle out in this weather."

Or:

"It's that cold, even the rats are wearing fur coats."

Yes folks.  Its that time of year when we smallholders have to house the farm animals and give them hay and think about all those poor people and animals suffering in the countryside.  There are lots of poor people living a rural existence.  I have seen people living in vans and tepees in the countryside.  The countryside is not just a place for rich farmers or 'weekender's' and 'holiday house's' with Aga ovens and plastic mud on the Chelsea tractors (Range Rovers).

Here's: WIND: Ted Hughes.

This house had been far out at sea all night,
The woods crashing through darkness, the booming hills,
Winds stampeding the fields under the window
Floundering black astride and blinding wet

Till day rose; then under an orange sky
The hills had new places, and wind wielded
Blade-light, luminous black and emerald,
Flexing like the lens of a mad eye.

At noon I scaled along the house-side as far as
The coal-house door.  I dared once to look up-
Through the brunt wind that dented the balls of my eyes
The tent of the hills drummed and strained its guy-rope,

The fields quivering, the skyline a grimace,
At any second to bang and vanish with a flap:
The wind flung a magpie away and a black-
Back gull bent like an iron bar slowly.  The house

Rang like some fine green goblet in the note
That any second would shatter it.  Now deep
In chairs, in front of the great fire, we grip
Our hearts and cannot entertain book, thought,

Or each other.  We watch the fire blazing,
And feel the roots of the house move, but sit on,
Seeing the windows tremble to come in,
Hearing the stones cry out under the horizons.