Mother(-in-law) Nature

11th Jan 2005

She's really been spitting and yelling her lungs out recently with her lethal ability to dismember and disrupt human life.

Her annihilation left mankind in deep despair and contemplation. If nothing else it has made me realise my own meagre position in this world. I never get hung up on material belongings anyway (even though I use a mobile phone, a television and a computer) but like some I'm mentally ready to rid myself of everything material if I were obliged to do so. I need nothing but a stable mind and an able body.

It isn't just Indonesia that has been affected by extreme natural calamity. I received a phone call from my sister-in-law at the weekend; her flat (and the whole street where it is situated) in the centre of Carlisle was flooded after a month's rain fell in 24 hours. Three people dead.

On a smaller scale (but by no means less affective) I was embroiled in a minor scrap with the mother-in-law on my way home tonight. Already at a disadvantage on two wheels what chance did I have with her rotten mood? Her clandestine actions didn't surprise me; at once luring me into her eye by forcefully encouraging me to break the speed limit before delivering a suckerpunch in the guise of repeated gusts of sidewind. At one climactic point, fate staring me in the face, I saw my sorry end arriving: a lashing wind whipped me out in front of a following truck. His horn blared while he broke. For a split second I think I lost consciousness before luckily swerving back into safety. A real moment.

Arriving home "L" welcomed in a battered, bruised and mildly traumatised fighter. Victorious.