Windswept

On the 22nd of March, 2010, Perth had a freak storm, causing millions of dollars worth of damage.  My university alone bore $5 million worth of damage, between broken stained glass windows, skylights, glasshouses and flood damage. Ironically, the building worst hit was the architecture and fine arts library, which flooded as it is partially underground.  Not such a good architectural design, as it turns out.  On a lighter note, I’d just started working in the boarding house, and the playing fields were so thickly covered in hail that it looked like it had been snowing.

Since then, Perth has had a tendency to overreact with its storm warnings.  If the government was a cartoon character, I’d imagine it as being the lady in the kitchen who jumps on the chair with a broom and shrieks every time she sees Jerry the mouse appear in the kitchen. Tuesday was my birthday, and the day was shrouded in doom and gloom predictions about the storm to end all storms.  As usual, while it was quite a storm, it failed to live up to the hype.  But that’s an entirely different story.

Two days before that, it was a remarkably windy day, with winds clocked at 105km an hour.  I live near the coast, so when it’s windy, we definitely feel it, as there’s little between us and the ocean to ameliorate its force.  For meals, I walk across the rugby oval to the glass-fronted dining hall which looks out over the playing fields.  It’s a beautiful prospect, and many a pleasant dinner has passed there chatting with the other staff and watching the sunset in winter, and the water-drop helicopters circle in the summer as they try to contain the bushfires.

At lunch, the wind had picked up to such an extent that bits of foliage were rolling across the oval like tumbleweeds as I made my way to the dining hall.  All the doors were closed, so I deployed puppydog eyes to get someone to open the door.  Eventually, someone took pity on me and opened it, after the requisite period of everyone grinning at me through the glass had passed.  

As I stepped through the doorway, a sudden gust of wind caught the door behind me so that it quite literally scooped me up off my feet and I found myself flying into the room with the door pressed against my back.  The journey abruptly ended with the door slamming into the jamb with impressive force, leaving me to make an improved dismount.  

I turned to salute my audience and took a seat to the hooting of the assembled lunchgoers, to in turn mock the would-be doorway travelers as they were redirected to the side door.