STORMCLOUD I
[Dream target date - Summer 1967]

I was six years old when the stormcloud first chased me home from the Robert Jones Infant's School. Kid's walked home unaccompanied in those days. It was usually a time of great rejoicement when the bell came, but not when the stormcloud came.

The stormcloud lay like a giant grey army-blanket across the treetops at the end of Appleton Road. The distant rumble brought a sense of urgency to my step. The sound grew louder and louder until I was running in panic. Like some terrible nightmare, the closer I got to home the harder I had to run in order to reach it.

Grey sky opened and a flash of lightening snaked down the centre of the road, bouncing off the glistening tarmac. It fell short of the forest. Houses shook and the thunderclap drowned my cries as completely as the rain drowned my tears.

My Mother was standing at the gate, her tears hidden, as her eldest son struggled to reach her, soaking wet under a dead-weight of black gabardine, balaclava and school shorts.

STORMCLOUD II
[Dream target date - Summer 1974]

My nine-year-old brother Peter and his best friend Timothy Platt had been playing in the forest when the stormcloud came back. My Mother was away, visiting her parents in Mansfield Woodhouse and my Dad was in the kitchen boiling some mussels in a pan - The smell was foul. He had the radiogram on and was listening to the afternoon play on Radio 4. Speakers crackled noisily as the cloud moved towards the forest, lining up its target at the bottom of the road, like skittles in a bowling alley.

I stood on the back porch watching the rain, I was nervous. We had the back door open because that's what we were taught to do. The theory being that if a thunderbolt came down the chimney it would be able to escape through the back door. I could hear Pete and Tim chuckling in the gennel [a small passageway running through the middle of the terraced houses]. Tim was moving to Kent in a couple of weeks time, so this would be his last summer holiday with us. The stormcloud was about to give him something to remember us by.

PURPLE WHITE

Suddenly the front window was illuminated by a purple-white flash. The house shook, my stomach turned and then came the screams from Pete and Tim as they bolted from their shelter. Pete's lips were as purple as the lightening flash and Tim was so hysterical that my Dad had to slap him to bring him to his senses. It wasn't the initial strike that frightened the boys, but the ball lightening which drifted into view immediately afterwards.

RADIO SILENCE

The mussels had gone off the boil. Instinctively my Dad turned the dials on the oven, but as he did so, the whole hob went up in a spectacular shower of red sparks. It looked really comical, like something from a cartoon. The radio switched off at that point also. Our power was gone.

SIX TWO FIVE LINES

The advent of high resolution television in the late 1960's brought with it a forest of TV aerials, ideal fodder for visiting stomclouds. Our elderly neighbours' aerial took the full force of the blast, though it would be several days before the full extent of the damage was known. Returning from holiday they would discover a burned-out TV set and black scorch marks on the living room walls where wires had fused beneath the surface.

STORMCLOUD III
[Dream target date - Summer 1998]

The same stormcloud didn't return to the village until many years later. By which time, Blidworth had changed beyond all recognition. Children no longer walked home from school unaccompanied. Most of the forestry had vanished, along with the pit-heads, pit-chimney and other seductive spires. Even the TV aerials were smaller and some had been replaced altogether with neat little satellite dishes.

TWELVE SECONDS AND COUNTING

I now lived some twelve miles from the village. I stood on the doorstep with my youngest daughter in my arms and watched as my wife drove away to work. "That's a stormcloud" I said to Daisy. I rescued the washing from the garden, covered the rabbit run with blue tarpaulin and attempted to get Daisy to sleep before the cloud did its worst.

Hannah and I were watching television when it came. There was a twelve second delay between the lightening flash and the sound of thunder. Daisy added her screams to the ongoing noise and I ran upstairs to her assistance. She was hiding under the covers, clutching her security blanket. I brought her back downstairs with me. It was enough to be with other people.

Daisy watched as the stormcloud moved back and forth over the dark landscape. She'd never experienced a thunderstorm before and grappled with new expressions like 'lightening', 'thunder' and 'flash'

Together, we counted the silent pause between flash and thunder, this was supposed to tell you how many miles away the storm was. Sometimes we reached twelve seconds, sometimes nineteen and then as little as one or two. This went on for almost three hours until the stormcloud was all but spent and Daisy was able to sleep peacefully.

COUNTING AND COUNTING

The stormcloud couldn't find the dense pine-forest at the bottom of Appleton Road. But it would be back of course, it always was, in an endless pursuit of a forest that now only exists in my head.