A DARK AND STORMY NIGHT

Sep 12, 2011 Features / Columnists, Tony Deyal column

It was a dark and stormy night. This might be the worst way to start a novel but it is exactly the right way to describe what happened to us in Antigua a little more than two weeks ago when one of the outer bands of Hurricane Irene was over the island for what seemed to be an eternity but turned out to be one heck of a rainy and windy night.
Had it been a week or so earlier, that particular band would have made it just in time for carnival and its portrayal of ‘Stormy Weather’ would easily have won it the band of the year and possibly the road-march.
I got out of the house on the morning after to survey the net effect of the storm. It was devastating. I refer really to my son’s batting cage or practice net that I had installed a few months ago when my landlady decided to construct a driveway leading from the front gate to the back entrance. Had the driveway not been there, the net effect would have been minimal but the flooding would have been considerable.
Beneath the thin layer of beach sand, replete with shells and dour vegetation including the poisonous ‘cassie’ (acacia) that covers our yard, there lurks clay that is impermeable and as repelling as it is repellent. We have to wait days for the water to evaporate because it is unable to drain. It just sits there attracting mosquitoes and frogs as well as our furry dogs which we then have to thoroughly wash.
The net effect is what told me that what had passed through the night before was serious. After the concrete driveway was built, my son Zubin and I had hastily initiated a long mothballed strategy to have our own practice net. Our excuse to my wife was that having broken three windows already, we were constructing the net to prevent further damage. She did not like it and was less than impressed with my early efforts.
My plan was to dig four holes at nine-foot intervals on each side of the driveway, close enough to allow the car to pass (no problem since it is very small) but at the right angle so any ball hit at whatever speed would either be stopped by the net or would go over the top of the window. It would be a smashing success, we promised her.
Having got the permission of my landlady, I acquired eight ten-foot lengths of galvanised iron pipes each two inches in diameter. They were strong and sturdy and would withstand the wind, I thought. A friend, Owen Clashing, who owns a plant business, gave us free netting, the major and most expensive ingredient in the mix. He wanted to help nurture Zubin’s cricket and this was his contribution.
First, I laboriously dug the holes making sure they were as accurately parallel as possible. Then I planted and cemented one-foot lengths of a larger bore pipe (2.5 inches) into the holes. In the meantime, I drilled holes at the top, middle and bottom of the ten-foot pipes (destined to be uprights) and linked them with thin cables over which I secured the netting. The net effect before Irene and her band ravaged the land was brilliant – kids galore frequented the practice strip – all part of Zubin’s cricket network.
My wife, Indranie, was not pleased since she considered these lengths of pipe with drapery an eyesore and she was also angry that my original design, which essentially amounted to my being able to remove the poles after practice, roll them up and store them, was abandoned for a permanent erection. It was wholly or ‘holey’ my fault when the net came crashing down.
Our bedroom windows on the Eastern side of the house are so positioned (and the house is so built that there is no overhang which would allow a hurricane to go with the roof), that when rain comes, invariably from the East, we have to close the windows. We heard the rain on the roof during the night but since the ceilings are high and insulated with board, the sound was not the insistent drumming that I grew up with in Trinidad when the galvanise or zinc took the pounding and passed it on to us.
It was a bit more muted like the wind in the neem tree. However, when I went into the kitchen, still gloomy at nine in the morning, my daughter Jasmine was already up and it was she who alerted me to what had happened outside. The banana trees were down but that happens with even the slightest wind.
I did not mind that the plastic chairs under the neem tree had been blown far away. What stunned me was the sight of the poles, on which I had lavished such attention to make them strong and sturdy, level with the ground and all facing West. These were new galvanised iron pipes and all had been bent by the wind at the point where they were fitted into the larger pipes. One of them had been uprooted, concrete base and all. They had exercised the reverence we should have and bowed to the wind.
This is why I feared for my friends and family in New York when Irene headed for the East Coast. I reasoned that if a band of the storm almost three hundred miles away could bend iron pipes, consider what a direct hit would do.
As I write, it seems we might get that opportunity shortly. It is Wednesday and today’s Antigua Observer says that Tropical Depression (TD) 14 was heading towards us. It will give up my initials (TD) and become Tropical Storm Maria or maybe even Hurricane Maria. The news is enough to put me in a state of acute depression.
*Tony Deyal said that the Irene news was not all bad. According to Jay Leno there was so much rain in New York that a lot of the cabdrivers had their first shower in years.