Stormy weather- Britain remembers 1987 and now for Ophelia.

Stormy weather- Britain remembers 1987 and now for Ophelia.

The Manor House sky has turned a peculiar and haunting shade of grey. In fact it looks like the setting for some eerie Gothic novel set in some mysterious castle where thunder and lightning crack and flash with frightening frequency. The grey is battleship grey, with occasional glimpses of an orange sun, threatening, bubbly banks of cloud which suggest rain by the bucketload but then seem to hover in the air as if waiting for something ominous to happen. But it hasn't and nor does the rain look likely in the foreseeable future.

Today's news has given us fair warning of Hurricane Ophelia, a meteorological phenomenon blasting and powering its way around the world like a stampeding herd of grey elephants charging across the savannahs and plains of Africa. Hurricane Ophelia has already hit and tragically destroyed major parts of Ireland and it looks as if it's left some of its unfortunate carnage in some parts of Britain. This is the weather forecast you've probably heard a thousand times today so maybe it's best not to remind you of the obvious.

The winds and tempests of Mother Nature have ripped out the very heart of everything we hold so precious: telegraph poles, once impregnable buildings, house tiles from roofs, chimney stacks, shops, the coastal shoreline defences and the very fabric of society. Hurricanes and earthquakes have somehow dominated the news agenda in recent times but then there does seem an enduring fragility about the world order. But there are things that often seem unavoidable regardless of the time of the year.

In fact 30 years ago exactly Britain was given the most distressing shake up it had ever had by the forces of nature. In 1987 the nation awoke to the most incredible scene of destruction, mayhem, chaos and long term damage. The weather had literally turned Britain upside down, terrified the vulnerable, sent most of our cats and dogs straight for the back of the sofa and all around us storms were battering every house, every street and road before sweeping across the land in a disastrous fit of rage.

On that morning I woke up, took one look out of my parents window and thought the world had indeed fallen apart. It felt as though somebody had taken a sledgehammer and wrecking ball and swung it across the whole of our road. At the bottom of our road, my dad's grey Cortina had been given a severe bashing by a very loose and crumbling wall on the corner of a road next to ours. One minute all was calm and serenity and then Michael Fish, with able assistance from his fellow BBC weatherman Bill Giles, had confidently believed that none of us had anything to worry about.

Then to the eternal horror of Britain we flung open our curtains that fateful October morning only to find that everything had gone, everything had been broken, seemingly irreparably wherever you looked. Dustbin lids had travelled to another neighbourhood, things had been swept away and then scattered into some far distant land of obscurity where the essential infrastructure of the country had been totally lost. Everything lay in tattered ruins and insurance policies were the most obvious concerns of the day.

The contrasting moods and whims of the British climate can often play havoc with the best laid plans but when the storms and turbulences of early October announce themselves then nothing can stand in their way. Somehow we are at the mercy of those sharp, biting winds of mid- December, the relentless moaning, growling and wailing of those blustery gale force noises that whistle and howl like some Edgar Allan Poe murder mystery story.

This morning though it felt like mid-summer and some of us were scratching our heads in utter bewilderment. There was a warm but cool air about us that felt almost strangely confusing. Even the crows in Valentines Park were at a complete loss and began to ask questions. We are in now in the tender embrace of Autumn but today seems to have sent all of us into a state of puzzled incredulity. It does seem that Storm Ophelia has caught us completely off guard and by this afternoon most of the nation seemed to be under some mystical blanket of cloud.

I. for one, looked out of a train carriage window and couldn't believe what I was looking at. There was a mournful sadness about the North London sky. In fact the sky looked grief stricken and inconsolable, barely able to hold back its tears. But the rain, amazingly, held back and didn't do what it looked as if it had been threatening to do for the best part of the afternoon.

How the British weather has cast an almost magical spell over us. This afternoon it certainly held me in the most mesmeric of trances. I was reminded of one of those classic Victorian period dramas where white winter fogs swirl around lantern lit streets. And yet there were no fogs and no lanterns just a traumatised grey, hovering, lingering, fearing the worst but in its way a source of great fascination.

We have now been told that the weird orange sun in the British skies isn't something out of the ordinary. Apparently Britain is currently catching the remnants of Storm Ophelia . It almost felt like some elaborate science fiction movie set had suddenly arrived, heavy with doom and gloom. But that greyness was much darker and more forbidding than the normal grey of a winter day. There was a supernatural feel about the day that certainly sent a shiver down my spine.

Now that evening is with us the day has now slipped inexplicably into the mists of history. For some of us the advent of Storm Ophelia and that historic day back in October seem like the most morbid of coincidences. At some point the storms, hurricanes and earthquakes will subside and we will then we'll all sigh philosophically at the British weather. But then we've always wondered and sighed or maybe we're just resigned to whatever will be will be que sera sera.

The words of BBC weatherman Michael Fish resonate down the decades. Fish had tried to re-assure us that nothing untoward would happen to the people of Britain and we'd be perfectly safe from the predicted terrifying storms. That lady had got it all wrong and we should all turn over on our pillows, sleep soundly and just ignore the weathermen. How dreadfully and unforgivably wrong were they. And so here we are 30 years later and none the wiser about the weather. Global warming, Donald Trump, that bloke in North Korea? Somebody has got to be responsible for this. There is an inherent blame culture at work here but maybe the sun will come out tomorrow bet your dollar it will come out. There will be blue birds over the white cliffs of Dover. Undoubtedly.