My first… earthquake!

One of the dubious ‘pleasures’ of ‘getting on a bit’ – and in particular if one takes a diuretic (for hypertension or suchlike) – is that it is much harder to sleep through the night. The call of nature is loud, clear and impossible to ignore.

Thus it was that I was up at 4:00am this morning, availing myself of the facilities!

I had just got back to bed and was drifting off into much appreciated slumber when – all of a sudden – I heard through the quiet of the night a rapidly growing bass rumble. I felt the bed move under me as the crescendo ended in a loud-ish thump and all manner of things on walls and in cupboards rattled vigorously. Then all was at once quiet again.

In my sleep be-fuddled state two thoughts made it though to my consciousness. The first was that a truck had hit the front of the house; unlikely because it was the middle of the night and we live in a place where trucks are not wont to go. The second thought was that there had been an earthquake!

Now – one’s first response to such an eventuality is meant to be to leap from one’s bed and to take shelter underneath some well-reinforced structure. My first thought was to grab my iThing and to look up ‘earthquake‘ on Google. There it was – within 30 seconds of the thing occurring – an entry much like that at the top of this jotting.

“Goodness me…” – thought I – “that’s jolly efficient!”

I guess I really should do some more work on my priorities.

It has been more than six years now since we moved to the part of the Pacific Rim that forms the North Cascadian subduction zone – one of the well-known hot-spots for tremors that make up this part of the ‘Ring of Fire’. I figured that at some point I would experience a quake – even if it were a small one like this (for those who wish to know the details this one registered 3.6 on the Richter scale, with the epicentre some 10 miles beneath Galliano Island – about 15 miles north-west of us here. To The Girl – who is, naturally, an old hand at such things – it was hardly worth waking up for. To me it was an experience…

…which – having had – I wouldn’t mind not having again!

By a strange co-incidence this quake occurred on the same night that a very different (metaphorical!) quake shook the folks back in good old Blighty! I am referring, of course, to the Liberals defeating the Tory candidate in the North Shropshire by-election… which seat had been held by the Tories for more than two hundred years! As a judgement on the performance, record, behaviour and character of Prime Minister Johnson I find it hugely encouraging that the electorate has finally spoken with such eloquence and clarity.

Let us have much more of the same, say I…