Weather and Memory

10T read the opening to the non-fiction work The Snow Tourist, by Charlie English, and then wrote autobiographical articles about the weather provoking memories

Jiali Hicks:

It is not the weather that blinds us

I sit cross-legged in my room, gazing out of the closed window. The ceiling light is dingy, and the humid air of December creates a blanket of fog that suspends in the troposphere, so dense that I can’t see the houses across from me, like a blindfold covering my eyes. I can, however, hear the incessant battering of rain on my window pane. 

   I remember, around the age of eight, there was a day where the weather was similar to this. I can’t recall much, for my memory is not reliable enough to capture all the details. 

   I once came back from school to find half of my stuffed animals missing. I had a whole shelf of them. Immediately, I bursted out crying, and my mother sauntered into the room as if she expected this reaction. ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked. 

   ‘My toys are gone.’ I didn’t manage to say it as fluently as you might’ve read it. The sentence was broken apart by sharp inhalations of breath, like a faulty mp3 player. She rested her hand on my shoulder, and with a monotonous voice, told me, ‘I’ve given them to charity.’

   It was a stab in the back, for lack of better words. I felt a balloon pop somewhere in my viscera, and with it, an outburst of rage erupted from me. Who knew that rail-thin child could produce such an ear-splitting noise? Again, my mother seemed like she expected this, and instead of consoling me or telling me off (neither of which would have done anything to smother the sound of the volcano which I had become), she merely let go of my shoulder and returned to the kitchen. I could say I screamed for hours, never ceasing, for dramatic effect, but reality wasn’t like that. I yelled until my throat hurt, which was for about five minutes, because eight year old Jiali was not a tough one. Afterwards, I just sat crying in my room. How could she do something like that? And without asking me first? I loathed her, I decided that. And I would never speak to her again (that promise didn’t last for very long). That day, things were taken away from me that I had no say in. Things I valued, things I cherished. My memory is like that: I can’t choose which ones I get to keep. None of us can.

So here I was, lying in my bed. Again, eight years old (only using the information which my memory provides me, eight years old seems like the most eventful year of my life). I completely encased myself in the covers, because every child knows that exposing any part of your body would be a surefire way of getting eaten by the monsters under the bed. The rain was drumming a cacophonous rhythm, and the air outside was hazy, the artificial streetlights adding an orange tint to the cloud that was too close to the ground.

   I was petrified. This was the kind of weather murderers favoured; someone was going to jump through the window and stab me and no one would know because it was raining and the fog obstructed people’s visions. I could scream, but that’d only wake my parents up and then they’d come rushing into my bedroom, concerned, only to find me lying dead on my bed. If the murderer hadn’t escaped yet, there’d also have been a very high chance that they’d get killed too. Oh, the wonders of children’s imaginations.

I would like to point out that since then, I have encountered many more storms and many more fogs and that I do not believe a person will burden themselves with the task of jumping through my bedroom window to murder me. Because in the grand scheme of things, I understand that I am not a very interesting target. 

   But doesn’t that feel more frightening? That with age, these ridiculous fantasies of how the world works vanishes as you’re being told more and more on how the world actually works? When you were younger, your imagination was able to run free, chasing as many butterflies as it wished. Your life did not ride upon success. You weren’t concerned with student loans, or your job, or how much money you were making. You were never wondering about whether or not people liked you, the wider issues of life could not touch you. Yes, you may have been a little self-centred and tumultuously over-dramatic, thinking that the world was going to end because you lost your beloved stuffed teddy bears, but you were invincible. And now? Well, those butterflies seem to be trapped in the pit of your stomach, always demanding to take the safest route. Your imagination seems to be confined by the walls society has built for us, the expectations and regulations of life, the predisposition to thinking that life is what other people tell you. It seems to be cornered into the very depths of your mind, with each passing day, its room a little smaller. Memories crowd the space. Memories of your past failures, of losses, of embarrassment. Memories that seem to define who you are. You can’t choose the memories you get to keep.

   Where did all that creativity go? The rain might’ve washed it away; it might’ve been lost in the fog; it probably disappeared the first time you were told that rainbows are not actually paint-strokes made by God to make the sky a little more colourful, only reflections of light from raindrops. Or the moment you realise that wishing upon a shooting star does not grant you the power of flight, that you are very much bound to the earth by these shackles called reality.

I sink a little further into the floor and accept that my vision is not like it once was: this blindfold is one that I cannot remove.

*

Ria Freeman:

Sandstorm in Dubai

In 2016, I went on a one week holiday to Dubai. I remember the holiday so well due to the sandstorm that was occurring during my holiday. I remember the feeling of the sand getting in my eyelashes and eyes and feeling the grains of sand hit my body when the wind blew in my direction. Because I was young at the time, I wasn't sure why there was so much sand everywhere until my grandad told me that it was because of the sand travelling from the desert. I didn’t even know about sandstorms and where they occurred so I learnt something new as well as experiencing this type of weather. It dimmed the sky but the weather stayed hot. I would find bits of sand in my water and on my towel when I was by the pool. The hot, humid weather felt like I was being suffocated at times, it made me really appreciate the air conditioning inside of the hotel. This holiday was also when I found out that Dubai used to be a desert and how it adds to why it was so scorching hot all the time. 

*

Eli Beard

Storm Eunice

I'm sure we all know of the recent storm, Strom Eunice, with record breaking wind speeds of up to 122mph this storm caused significant damage to the areas which it passed,  leaving nothing untouched. Roofs were blown off and power lines were brought down. It also led to flights being delayed and schools being closed. People were seriously injured from the storm with flying objects but my experience was something different. I live a bit further away from the school and I know many other people that do the same. It was a weekend day and as I was spending my time not doing anything particularly useful, as we all do, I was talking to some friends online. As we were talking we started to mention the storm and then a friend’s power went out. I thought nothing of it and continued to just keep talking to my friends but then others had also been getting power cuts. I tried to reassure myself saying I lived in a different area to them so surely I was going to be fine. However, moments after thinking this everything turned off. The lights in my room, the computer I was using to talk and the heat lamps that my bearded dragon needed to stay alive. 

The first thing I did was walk out of my room to go see my parents and everything was just silent. Everything was already silent before but it felt like there was no life to the house and that something was missing. Of course there was something missing and that was the electricity as my power had cut. Looking outside leaves were scattered everywhere and as I looked outside I started to question whether the electricity pylons had fallen outside my house and just how long I was going to have to wait. I tried to not use my phone as I wanted to save the power for when I needed it later in the day. I was expecting to have to wait for at least 2 days before the power came back on and the experience was quite frightening. My friend sent me a video of the common flooded from the storm which made me assume that the power was going to be out for a long time. 

After an hour had passed, I was talking with my mum about how long it would be until the power came back on and what would be different depending on how long it stayed off. But, as we were talking the lights came back on and the amount of relief was immeasurable at the time. So, naturally I went back to my room and turned all the plugs back on and went back to my useless acts. It’s interesting to see how much we rely on technology as a society and in the school as I assume the school would be not runnable if we had no electricity. Even the doors on the left side of the arch require electricity to open. Therefore, I think I had it quite easy and I’m sure many other people had much worse experiences but that also supports the point of how we rely on technology so much and it’s quite frightening to stand back and take a look.

*

Sophia Cheng

Anemoi’s wrath

This event probably happened a few years ago. I was on a holiday with my mum in China and some rather bizarre weather happened despite it being the middle of the Easter holiday. A regular day in Guilin (the city we were staying) would have been hot and humid enough to half cook a fried egg on a pan left by an east facing window at midday. Despite scorching weather, more often than not we got caught up in the one week where there was more fog than the city’s buildings.

I vividly remember the one day of our stay where the cerulean sky was smiling at us as if to say, ‘Hey what are you doing inside? Get out here and have some fun!’ Little did the entire city know it was calm before the storm…quite literally. Due to the ‘spectacular’ weather my family and i went out hiking by a mountain which at the time seemed like a brilliant idea. Before leaving we packed a bag which contained: food, drinks, entertainment for the long drive, necessities and no raincoats. Great idea everyone considering the weather’s track record until that day. 

The short day trip was overall a success, at least until the wind started to howl like a distant wolf, the once blue sky became encased in a grey fur coat and the people started retreating back to the car park. For some unknown reason none of us bothered to read the signs and follow the flow of the flooding crown. We ventured forwards into the realm of bamboo soldiers either side of a cobbled path surrounded by a gradual build up of mist as the altitude increased until it was time to turn back.

To our horror, in our admiration of the surreal view of the landscape surrounding us we failed to acknowledge the fact the clouds above us were getting progressively thicker until what appeared to be the latter time of sunset was in reality only about one o’clock in the afternoon. The temperature decreased as we began to venture back down and the scent of rain foreshadowed the arrival of a storm.

The storm had a one in a million chance of happening but it had to be the one day with decent weather. The ashened duvet in the sky started throwing bullets of water at us as if to punish us for our carelessness. The wind blew with a clashing until the vertical bamboo barricades to either side of us began twisting in more directions than my eight year old mind could have processed. We ran. My mother, my grandmother, my grandfather, two aunts and I all ran: fast. Our shoes filled with cups of water as we splashed through pools in the uneven yet smooth ground. After what felt like eternity of running in the horrendous weather we arrived at the carpark, finally shelter from the wrath of Anemoi.