Winter is famously wild the Bay of Biscay sailors sing sea shanties about it, surfers in Hawaii and Australia are on standby, ready to jump on a plane when they get the call that the Belharra wave is breaking at over  fifty foot. The swells came in week after week month after month, beaches were closed, people and cars were swept off the promenades, the cliffs crumbled onto beaches. An oil tanker was snapped in half on a breakwater. Monster tides flooded the lowland, bringing in swathes of brightly coloured plastic junk, and when the tide went back out the sand was littered with dead seabirds.

Nice weather for beachcombers, this was the FULL can of Polish beer I found on the beach, I felt so lucky, but at the last moment I didn’t dare drink it so I made it into a slug trap. Bastards still ate my geraniums