"Potentially one of the most serious storms of the century"

I'm supposed to be going to the beach today, to an island an hour away on the car ferry, for two weeks. After the record-setting torrential rain and flooding we had last week, and after a summer that's so far been wet far more often than it's been dry, I was hoping that the weather would settle to its customary February reliable sun.

What are we getting instead? A Category 3 tropical cyclone.

Am I going to a beachfront property with massive waves predicted? Where torrential rain might cause a slip in the steep bank just behind the house? Where power cuts are common anyway, let alone in a storm, and where there is tank water only which relies on an electric pump? On an island where I can't get away because the ferries can't run in high seas/strong wind?

I am not.

Instead I am springing the good news on our clients that they will be getting our services for a few more days before we decamp. Continuing to earn at least takes a little bit of the sting out of paying for a holiday home it's too late to cancel and is now sitting empty at an eye-watering nightly fee. If after the cyclone the holiday house is still standing, if *my* house is still standing, and if the island isn't an official disaster zone, we'll be going later next week. Maybe we can extend the stay if the weather then comes right, but this year, that's a very huge if.

And as well as Mah Holiday, I'm kind of scared of going through this cyclone even at home. We're likely to get as much rain again as we did last week, on ground that's still saturated. I'm not going to have flooding, but the winds are another matter. The height that protects me from flooding makes my property more vulnerable to wind. The winds forecast could handily knock my trees down and rip my roof off.

This is not how things usually go. Tropical cyclones here are far from an everyday thing. Or they were, in the before times. I miss the before times.