Wind!

We're having unusual weather. Eighty mile per hour winds are roaring through London. Sometimes with rain, sometimes without. It's been going since Monday and its supposed to last until maybe tomorrow.

Monday it rained and I walked to work with my umbrella, wind or no wind. I have a half hour walk each morning, and the whole time I was focused on one thing, "don't let the umbrella get blown inside out." The key is, you have to angle it, so the top-side of the umbrella is pointed into the wind. If the wind catches it from underneath, the umbrella is going to get reversed, and you'll look like a fool.

On Monday morning, sensing the wind's direction and keeping the umbrella braced against it was a full-time job. When the wind was blowing straight into my face, I had to basically lower the umbrella as a shield, and I couldn't see where I was going. When I got close to the river, things really started to pick up, and I had to use both hands to hold the umbrella, one at the bottom and one at the top. Even with all this effort, sometimes the wind reversed direction in a heartbeat and I was made to look like a fool, with an inside-out umbrella. But at least my head wasn't too wet when I got to work.

When I walked home though, I decided to give up on the struggle. It was a great idea, because the rain wasn't nearly as bad as the wind. I got wet, but not soaked, and I didn't have any stress. That day half of London got the same idea, and I had the unusual sight of lots of Londoners walking around with umbrellas folded up under their arms, just letting themselves get rained on.

Also on the way home, I walked through an umbrella graveyard. There were dozens of mangled and destroyed umbrellas everywhere, sometimes in trashcans, sometimes not. A cheap umbrella just can't handle wind like this - the metal frames will bend, or the joints will break. Crazy.

It hasn't rained since while I was walking home, but the wind is still howling fiercely. You can hear it, like a roaring, shrieking mob outside the office windows.

Today I took a walk after I ate lunch, because otherwise I would go crazy, just sitting at a computer all day. I work really closely to the Millenium bridge, so I usually go walk across it and along the river, as you get some great views. The millenium bridge is for pedestrians only - here it is:

I was going across it at lunch today and the wind was worse than ever, since we were right on top the river, no buildings to sheild us. You could literally lean right into it, and it would support your weight. That made walking difficult.

But I noticed that walking was harder than it should be. Something was wrong. Suddenly I realised, the whole bridge was swaying in the wind, moving beneath my feet. I was a bit worried about this. The bridge is infamous, because when it was first put up, it had to be closed within hours, because it was noticeably swaying. Interestingly enough, what happened was, by random chance, a bunch of people were walking with the same rhythym and got the bridge moving a tiny bit with them. Then, everyone else on the bridge started to adjust their steps to keep their balance, and the whole bridge fell into the same walking rhthym. And all those feet moving together - left, then right, then left, then right - really got the bridge moving.

So the closed the bridge and reinforced it a whole bunch. And now its supposed to be fine.

But it was definitely moving today. Not enough that you could see it visually, but enough that you felt a little motion sick while on it. Like you were walking on a boat. I don't know if its supposed to sway anymore or not, but I turned around and got off!

This is Grace on the bridge last year - she's looking a little scared. Maybe a premonition.