‘When the end of the world comes,’ I often say, ‘the first thing I’ll do is reach for a cigarette.’

               Just after 7pm last Tuesday I thought it had finally arrived; well for me anyway.  And did I have a packet of fags to hand? ‘Course not.  It’s 15 years since I kicked the habit, but in moments of stress I still involuntarily reach for my handbag. 

               Instead having exhausted every other towel, I found myself procrastinating on whether I should use the fluffy, white towels I give only to guests, to stem the tidal flow of water that was pouring through the bottom of every window.  It was also coming under the roof tiles but I was oblivious at that stage. Seemingly someone high in the sky was pointing a massive Karcher jet-washer directly at the house and just like that challenge at the end of ‘I’m a Celebrity’, me and everything in its sight were about to get swept away. 

               Would I ever see another guest?  So I could use the towels, right?  But why bother and waste energy trying to delay the inevitable?  Shouldn’t I just grab the three large ice-cream tubs from the freezer and go out on a sugar-high?   

               I grabbed the posh towels.  It would take my mind off not being able to have a cigarette in my hour of need and to leave the ice-cream well be. As the thunder and lightening cracked directly overhead, the shutters slapped at the walls and the windows rattled, I continued building my fabric-softener smelling barricade using everything I could find, save the spare bed linen.  All beautifully ironed.  By me. If I was going to be saved, my gratitude would not extend to needlessly having to re-iron that lot.   

               Standing back, I admired my handwork.  Bertie, who is normally terrified of storms seemed pacified by my odd behaviour.   The wind was slowing a bit. Perhaps me and the house were going to survive after all.  Now what?  Remind myself I’m British and make a cup of tea?  The power had gone so no chance of that.  Nor a good idea to open the freezer.  So no ice-cream.  I poured myself a large red and waited.  No telly, nor internet, but surprisingly I still had 4G. 

               Venturing to the back door, I gingerly opened it and stepped out onto the ravaged terrace to make a quick video; the real drama had already passed but the wind was still vicious, the rain still whipping and I began to see the heartbreaking aftermath – huge trees snapped like match sticks, broken roof tiles from the barn scattered everywhere, a lake at the bottom of the garden, the little stream fit for white-water rafting.  Bert was excited at discovering that he now had his own watersports centre.  We’d been lucky.

               I posted photos on Facebook thinking that maybe someone would see them and come and help me.  Little did I realise then that I was by no means the worst off, my house was still standing; another in the village had partially collapsed; roofs had been whipped off, trees had fallen in on houses, barns and sheds had all but disappeared, others had collapsed on to their contents of cars and farm machinery.  

               Mopping up as much as I could, I gave thanks that my electricity had been restored, started the washing machine and went to bed.  ‘It’ll all look better in the morning,’ I told myself.  It didn’t.  So many of my beautiful trees gone or scarred so badly that they’ll have to go.  The huge heavily laden branches of the Persian silk tree, that had just come into full bloom the day before, now blocked my way out of the house; the trees out front were a crazy jumble, a couple providing alternative new bridges over the stream; the perfect horse-chestnut which always looks so stately when covered in its chandelier-like blossom is now nothing more than a three-foot high stump; the upright little tree that is always the first to blossom and my indication that Spring has arrived is a waterfall of plums that will never ripen. 

And in answer to the question I posed last week about the apricot tree and who would get there first me or the birds, the answer is neither; the storm beat us both.  As for the huge Scottish pine that adorns so many photos I post on social media, it’s been cleaved in three and now resembles an arrow fired into the ground by the angry gods, another part smothering my damson tree.

               Even the huge oak tree which provides such welcome shade by the swimming pool and really is the star of the show has lost several branches.  How badly it’s been affected I will find out this afternoon when the tree surgeon arrives to make it safe.  But however bad, my tears are saved for my favourite oak which is the one that is ignored by everyone else; hidden as it is at the back of the garden and ordinarily screened from view by the barn and the now gone horse-chestnut tree.  I love that tree because it is definitely second best and gets no attention.  That is my special go to place from where you can survey everything whilst hiding away.  That has been battered on one side, so badly that the tree surgeon on his initial visit last week said it would have to go.  Over my dead body.  Once the snapped branches have been removed to make it safe, it may look lob-sided and odd but it will remain and still be my special place. A monument to those trees that have gone.

               It was pointed out to me, when I told someone I’d lost so many trees, I still can’t yet count their number, that I was fortunate.  People have lost their homes and their crops. And I understand that, but as I drive around and see the devastation it is not the missing roofs, twisted and fallen power lines, or crushed buildings that affect me; not even the huge new hangar that looks as if it has had a Boeing 747 crash in its midst.  It’s the trees.  Fallen trees everywhere.   So many trees.  Trees that have guarded this landscape since well before any of us who live here were born and which give such spiritual comfort and serenity.  Buildings can be repaired, crops replanted, but these living, beautiful trees are gone forever.

               And now almost a week later, my tidy up inside is almost finished.  I’ve washed the mud-streaked floors and walls and everything is almost normal; there’s still a whiff of damp water but it’s fading and the house this weekend rang to the laughter of guests dining on the terrace and swimming in the pool.  The sunlight in the evening glows golden on some of the split branches and stumps; beautiful new garden art which must remain at least until the insurance expert visits next month.  In fact no amount of devastation could make this garden look anything other than beautiful, especially as the adjoining field of sunflowers, stalks bent in the wind are now blooming regardless.

               We all rejuvenate. My dismay at finding my attic room where I store all my cards, childrens paintings, exercise books, letters, souvenirs and ephemera from my 60 odd years on this planet under water has turned to unexpected joy and recalling of forgotten memories as I have waded through soggy bottomed boxes of stuff.   Would I ever have opened any of these boxes again were it not for the flood?  Probably not. And that which was once quite nice, but maybe a little ordinary, becomes special with the passage of time. 

               Amongst so many sodden but still lovely things was a sketch that my Dad did some 20 years ago.  He’s now gone, but the picture reminds me of him and also of the place.  Forest Road, New Ollerton in the 1920’s, it says on it.  Forest Road in the 1970s was pretty much the same, except it had a bus stop.  It was at the other end of the village from where I lived – across the road from the pit and the cemetery where my great grandparents are buried.  ‘The cleanest gravestone in Ollerton,’ my Aunty Em would boast in that typical cleanliness is next to godliness way of hers.  

               But it’s that bus stop I remember and how me and my friend Tracey would spend hours sitting on the railings next to it waiting for something to happen, and of boys we fancied going by, or eating chips bought from one of those houses in the picture which by our day was a chippie.  And across the road was the other stop which had a shelter, which kept us dry in our Chelsea Girl finery and Boots 17 make-up as we caught the bus to Edwinstowe or Bilsthorpe or Mansfield and later Nottingham, hoping to get served in pubs where no-one knew that we were under-age or admitted to X-rated horror films. 

               Such insignificant things, long forgotten, but now such vivid memories brought back by that howling storm; that ache of youth, thinking that real life, the exciting stuff, is happening somewhere else and you haven’t been invited. Last Tuesday I was definitely in the midst of the action, but it’s all calm now. I still haven’t had a cigarette, but I don’t think there’s much ice-cream left.