I just blew in from the windy city

.....except it wasn't Chicago.

I must say I never thought I'd experience a hurricane, and now I have, well, it just wasn't what I was expecting at all. It wasn't half as bad as I thought it would be. (Sincere apologies to anyone who has suffered in a hurricane)

In the middle of it I let my kids go swimming in the pool, it was raining, admittedly, but then they were going to get wet anyway. There was no lightening, there was no debris flying around and I watched them all the time. Even stood at the side of the pool my hair wasn't even getting a little bit tousled from the wind. It was very weird.

The wind didn't seem to reach the ground so we could stand around smoking (even ligthing our fags outside) without the wind in our hair whilst watching a palm tree in next door's garden bend double.

I blame the movies. I was expecting something akin to 'Twister' without the spiralling funnel of wind, and it simply wasn't like that at all. The destruction wasn't as much as I expected either, but then as HurricaneFrances followed hot on the heels of Charley I think all the roofs that were going to blow off and all the trees that were going to be up-rooted happened during Charley.

When the power resumed (after 36 hours, and I know we were extremely lucky to get it back so quickly, many thanks KUA!) the news on TV that we were then on Tornado Warning just ended up making me laugh cos it was all so surreal.

Anyway, we're back, safe and sound and I hope anyone facing Ivan has the same experience we had, which boiled down to being stuck in the house and a bit bored in the dark, and that is better than death and destruction.

Watch out for lots of boring news from my holidays to follow ...........