I went to Cornwall for a long weekend, and the weather was just extraordinary, virtually scorching yesterday, but on Friday, there was a monumental storm, lashing waves, sea spray, thick rain, and high winds throughout the evening and long into the early hours. It was elemental. I have n't seen Nature so incensed, so powerful anywhere that I've been to. It was almost an exhibition of contempt for a very puny Mankind. I felt humbled, and minutely small, insignificant, a fly speck before it.

The pounding waves kept flicking pebbles of all sizes over the seafront, effortlessly. To have headed into the storm and risked that cannonade would have been madness. Either brained, or torn off the sea wall by very angry waves and into a boiling sea. Nightmare.

Then there was the darkness; not just darkness with the hint of light, but a utter blackness, a void, that sucked in any light and never to release it. I was too timid to walk into any of it.