Tabernackered

When it rains like this, all night and all day, you wonder if it is ever going to stop. The damp gets into your bones, into your vulnerable spots; legs, back, neck. In such weather you can believe in the supernatural.

Looking out of my window at the neat rows of back gardens meandering into the near distance, every second or so house has a temporary appendage. A little hut. Some of the booths are made in the traditional style, from sections of wood nailed together. Most now are made from plastic sheeting drawn across metal frames.

The wind lashes the tarpaulin, tugs at the guy ropes. Plastic fruit - apples, oranges, bananas, lemons - dance on the end of tattered lengths of string. Children’s drawings of fruit and tress and flowers turn to slush in the wet, the colours seeping down the translucent paper.

The roofs are made from a chaotic array of plant life thrown over the top of the hut. The winds catch the branches, tossing them over the side, where they swirl in the storm.

The hut attached to the house about 5 or 6 down from mine is the first to go. The ropes give way, the nails come loose, and the whole thing flies into the air and circles above like a plane waiting to land.

Another hut joins it, the tarpaulin dangling below the main structure like a long dress on a headless body.

Soon there are a dozen or so huts in the sky, circling and rising and falling in the ebb and flow of the currents.

From the top floor of my house, I have a good view over the rooftops of Golders Green and Finchley, even Hendon in the distance. As I watch, the sky fills up with these strange flying creatures. There must be hundreds now, a bizarre migration of exotic and frenetic birds, like a plague, almost, you might say.

One comes in close over head, and I see a little figure clutching to one of the ropes. Is it a silhouette, or an illusion? A little man, clutching to one of the ropes. His long black coat flaps around him, rising like a Dervish’s frock coat, carries on upwards, slapping him around his face. He kicks and jerks his body to try and force the coat down. I can see his long beard, grey-white; the same tones as the clouds above him.

The wind swings him closer to my window and I can see that his eyes are tight shut, his lips moving, echoing the incantations that he is reciting inside his mind.

Before I can do anything, not that I can think of what I might do, a powerful gust pushes him, and the other huts, higher into the sky. Up and up they go, until they are just tiny spots.
Far away birds, flying far far away.


The little man clings on for dear life. He is up with the clouds now, looking down on creation. He never stops praying. He finds himself beginning to enjoy the experience. Maybe enjoy is not the right word. Appreciate. He never ceases to surprise himself; how much there is to be thankful for.