News Tagged ‘Spits and Spots’

So now we are giving names to storms. Apparently they have been doing it for years in America so it must be a good idea, like black Friday, fracking and weird spelling. It is supposed to make people more aware of the potential threat of the storm in much the same way that bomber crews gave their planes names in the second world war. Although I can’t help thinking that ‘Crowd Killer’ or ‘Whispering Death’ are a little bit more effective than storm Gertrude or Abigail. Quick run for your life, Gertrude is coming! Seriously? I can sort of understand Abigail though, because storm is just another word for a big gale. 

But Barney? How old does the Met Office think we are? What is the logic in making a storm sound like a teddy? Are we all children? Are warnings more effective if the source of potential danger sounds cuddly? I remember stranger danger, strangers were scary precisely because they didn’t have names. If a stranger was called Barney I would probably have gone home with him.

Well at least what’s left of the media are enjoying themselves, when I say the media I mean social media of course. It has been absolutely thrilled to welcome Desmond, Frank and Imogen into the fold. Though the quality of their tweets leaves a little to be desired, Desmond is a bit wet, Frank is a blow hard and Imogen is changeable with a gloomy outlook.

On the upside it gives us someone to blame, when your house is three foot deep in filthy water and the TV is floating away it helps to be able to point the finger, ‘That bloody Clodagh, it’s all her fault!’ Knowing the identity of the culprit might even assist with the insurance claim, good luck tracking them down though, no fixed abode and all that. You could always report them to Crimewatch.

One slightly odd side-effect of naming and shaming storms is that they seem far more frequent, which is probably the point. This year has not been particularly stormy, but it certainly seems like it has. Positively crowded in fact, and a teeny bit BBC, less like 90 mile an hour winds and horizontal rain and more like attention seeking characters from a seventies teleplay. Abigail’s Party perhaps.

Despite my initial scepticism I am now thinking that naming inanimate random things may be the future. Which is why I’m writing this on a patient computer called Beatrice, whilst standing in shoes named Harriet and Gordon and supping on Colin, a very comforting though short lived cup of tea. Gwyneth the Volvo awaits to carry me off to collect my children from a school named Sefton, god only knows what my kids are called.