The robin materialises from a point in the ground where the storm disappeared. Out of all the thrashing rain and screaming winds, the bird stands, in the conspicuous, red-breasted, defiance of the season’s greetings card pose and begins to sing.
Storm Desmond, which newspaper headlines have called the wildest of all, seems to have largely passed through, although there are still errant gusts and cat-spits of rain.
“After a storm there must be a calm,” sang Desmond Dekker. It’s not calm yet. At the coat-flapping edges of the gale we escaped the worst of the flooding and wind damage that hit the north. But we have not come out of it unscathed. Flood barriers have been erected on the river towns, and the Severn flashes across fields where swans and geese gather for the event.