It had been the kind of day that never really gets light. The kind of day when the sky hung heavy and dark, so low that you felt you could reach up and touch its cold dampness. The rain never stopped, occasionally interspersed with stinging showers of hail. The sort of day that made you feel that all you wanted to do was curl up by a log fire with a mug of hot chocolate and a good book.

The rivers running through nearby towns had already burst their banks, flooding car parks and camp sites, rushing along in swirling brown torrents, taking tree branches and anything else they could find in their wake, and flooding was making many roads impassable.

By the time we went to bed the wind was howling, whistling down the chimney and lashing the rain against the shutters. There are no street lights here and there was no sign of the moon or stars, so the night was as black as pitch, as we listened to the unaccustomed sounds of things being picked up and hurled around the garden. I woke about 2am; the bedroom door was rattling, so I found a “sausage” to put across the bottom of the door that leads into the rear part of the house, as yet un-wind-proofed. I wondered what damage we’d find in the morning.

It was still dark when another noise woke me; I came to, trying unsuccessfully to identify the sound. The door was rattling again, but this time it sounded different, as if there was some kind of force behind it and then the noise came again,  ………Hugo miaowing for his breakfast and head-butting the door!