It’s 27th February 2008. The time 0056 hours. From a deep and tranquil sleep in peaceful Lincoln, I’m jolted into awareness by sudden ferocious thunder. This thunder, however, comes not from the clouds but from deep underground, a rumbling, rolling subterranean growl, felt more than heard as my house shakes violently around me. For ten, long seconds I hear the tiles above my head clatter and, half expecting chimney pots, I warily eye the ceiling as the overhead light swings in the streetlamps’ orange glow.
‘Terremoto!’
But this is England. After years of repressed tectonic distortion, it’s Mother England who’s abandoning her maidenly restraint to bellow and buck in a quaking orgasm of relief. Why should the Spanish word for earthquake spring into my mind? I’m transported back thirty-eight years.
