Monday, 11.16pm

I really like it when the man in the apartment next door sings. He’s awful. At the moment he’s practicing this strange warbling song, which seems to only consist of the lyrics ‘hey yooouuu, hey yooouuu’. I certainly wouldn’t be wooed by it if he was using it to serenade me, but through the anonymity of the walls I’m enjoying it. I like hearing other signs of life from my boxed in little room; listening to his crap music is sort of the closest thing I have to looking out a window. In the aftermath of a hurricane, hearing music pipe up in the dark is doubly nice to hear… It better be the bloody aftermath anyway. If the last few hours have just been God having a bubble then that man will have a lot to answer for when I get up there. I imagine he has a lot to answer for anyway though, what with the increasing famines and tsunamis and things. Sorry, sorry, not God - CLIMATE CHANGE. Silly me.  

But yeah, the singing, I’m enjoying it.  My links to the outside world are depleting rapidly: everyone having gone to bed in England and America, my storm updates are now coming to my phone via my mum in Australia, when she gets a chance to watch the news. Apparently ‘Today in Aussie Parliament’ is on the set right now so I won’t have any more information for at least an hour. And so neighbor-man’s distant, warbling, uneven tones are acting like my comforting nightlight. Not that I need a nightlight anyway - I’m not turning the main light off just in case when I flick the switch to turn it on again nothing happens... This blog is highlighting a massive gap in my knowledge, isn’t it? Seeing the evidence mount up here on virtual paper, I’m suddenly realising how perfectly dreadful my understanding of technology is. I mean, I didn’t think I was the next Steve Jobs or anything, but I thought I had the essentials, you know? I'll have to add it to the list of basic life-skills that happen to have passed me by, along with mental maths, swimming and knowing difference between and ‘your’ and ‘you’re.’ Well, now I've accepted my status as technological dunce, I might as well take this opportunity to point out that my posts would be much better ordered, over a number of thematic pages if only I could work out how to do it. It’s not for lack of trying. So if one day you click on a link and my blog has suddenly become a well ordered, wordy paradise, send me some congratulatory flowers or something, because I will be extremely proud of myself, and be expecting a big to do.

It’s been calm outside for a while now, so with no more shaking walls or crashing roofs, just the pattering of the rain and the bad singing next door, and I am actually going to sleep now.

Monday, 9.34pm

I wish I lived a floor down. The wind really picked up in the last few hours, and there are some banging noises on the roof making my whole little attic room shake. If this is what it’s like in a sturdy, brick apartment block in New York City, I can’t imagine what it must have been like for people in their wooden houses on the coast down south, or in the Caribbean, with buildings still being rebuilt from Haiti’s last earth-shattering natural disaster. Still, I have prepared myself. My good-for-nothing, internet-less laptop is packed away with my camera and other valuables, ready for swift saving should I need to make a speedy getaway, and everything that previously sat under the suspect nailed up trapdoor in the ceiling (a clear weakpoint, where the crashes get very loud), has been moved into the far corner of the room. I shall sleep tonight in my barricaded fortress (with my teddy):

The sign may have been excessive. I cannot convey to you how much of a loss I have been at without the internet. Updates on the storm are being texted to me by my very helpful friend on her laptop in Georgia, but other than that, my contact with civilisation is severely limited. So yes, I’ve made a fort, named it after myself and written a sign. For the moment, it is my world. Goodnight, outside-folk. 

Monday, 7.02pm

The internet connection is gone! Gone! I was prepared to lose electricity, water, heat, sanity … but INTERNET? This is AMERICA. The thought of what I’m going to do for the next 36 hours is not something I actually have the ability to contemplate. I mean, Edward just died. What on earth is Dodo going to do? Is she going to do as he would have wanted? Or keep on seeing Mr. Ladislaw, with his Byronic attraction and rebellious charm? And did Dr. Lydgate marry Rosie for love? I have a feeling he may not have done (I mean who would? She’s really annoying). Will Fred ever manage to repay Mary’s father? My brain literally can’t hold this many questions for 36 hours. Or longer. Who knows when the internet will return?? The lights have started intermittently flickering too (genuinely. My flatmate can now back me up on this, we both saw it). I think it’s time we all went to the Winchester, had a pint, and waited for all this to blow over.

Monday, 5.01pm

SANDY'S A GIRL! Why has no-one been putting more emphasis on this point? None of the news channels had suitably informed me about this. I had to google it. And it wasn't even an easy google. It took some digging. I feel like such a fool thinking of it as male all this time. Does that make me a sexist? Or just not a big enough Grease fan?

...

I'm sorry, more thoughts on that point were coming, but I just got distracted and completely lost my train of thought. I thought the light in my room flickered, and I froze in fear of losing power. Then I blinked, and thought the light flickered again, and got really tense. I've been sat up, straight backed like a startled rabbit, occasionally blinking to see if it looks the same as a light flickering, trying to catch myself out by blinking before I think of blinking. It's 10 minutes later now. I think I may have just blinked the first time as well. The power's still on. 

Monday, 2.57pm

I just went outside. And I realised the worst place to be in storm-struck NYC right now is actually twitter. From what I was reading on the internet, I was expecting to see powerlines down, freak winds and a ghost town of a city. As it is, the corner shop opposite is still running, people are still driving, the postman is still delivering and the wind and rain are battering down like one would expect them to in a usual storm. I realise it is going to get a lot worse than this, what with Sandy on his way in a couple of hours, but for now, I'd quite like the current updates to mirror what is going on right this minute, rather than what I should be expecting later. Everyone's getting frightfully ahead of themselves! My room doesn’t have an outside window, so I have no frame of reference other than news channels and twitter, and, when the storm gets heavy enough, sounds from what hits the roof. I was bracing myself for the power to go out any minute, and me to be on my own, in the dark with candles and books until at least Tuesday evening. I was getting ready to wallow! I’m now going to take a break from the terrifying news narratives and settle down to a nice calming episode of Middlemarch. Aaahh, Mr. Ladislaw ... 

Monday, 2.15pm

I got red on me. 

I only had a black sharpie and red nail polish to work with. It's suddenly hit me that we might lose water, and therefore not be able to wash ... and I might have to go into work tomorrow. I just stopped short of moving onto my face and neck, too. This was a rash decision. It doesn't even look real so I can't pretend I had an accident ... My room smells very strongly of nail polish. 

Monday, 12.28pm

Sometimes I like to pretend this isn’t a hurricane, but I’m actually barricaded in my house because of a zombie apocalypse. 

I don't know why I would attack a zombie with an ancient club. I definitely don't have access to one. I'm not one of the slag brothers. I think I need to seriously re-evaluate my zombie plan.

Sunday, 10.46pm

My internet’s being frighteningly slow. I assume that’s because by now absolutely everyone is holed up in their homes streaming stuff. Broadband providers should have prepared for this. There’s obviously going to be extra strain on the … wires, or waves, or whatever internet runs on, during extreme weather. If they can get wi-fi on a plane surely they can make it work for me. I had to stop re-watching Gavin & Stacey half way through. I nearly cried. Anyway, without iplayer co-operating I have had to move on to Netflix, which I luckily put off starting my 30 day trial on, waiting for the optimum moment to make the best use of the free films. This is definitely it. So I looked for a tv drama to get suitably engrossed in. Oddly, I picked the 1994 BBC production of Middlemarch. It was a strange decision as I’m not exactly a sucker for a period drama and I also am generally against watching a tv series before reading the book. But this is a hurricane, all normal laws are suspended. Anything could happen, I’m letting LOOSE. I’ve watched one episode and I am already hooked. Why doesn’t Lydgate stand up to the banker man?? And why is Dodo’s new husband being so mean to her!? And why does Fred assume Mary wants to marry him? And why do all the women ride side-saddle? I know it’s dainty but my God, it’s definitely dangerous. 

One Hour Ago

Our fridge broke again. The coils at the back get covered in ice and then it stops working, and every now and then we have to defrost it all and start again. At first we thought it was over-colding itself because of the humidity of summer. Now it’s happened in late October we think something’s wrong with the temperature regulator-thing (none of us are particularly technical). So after a confusing and crowded adventure in the local supermarket, I came home to see my flatmate with his head in the freezer, trying to speed up the defrosting process with a hairdryer. He’s still there now. And my foods still in bags. I’m looking over my pre-hurricane stock bemusedly while the white noise of the hairdryer makes me oddly calm. I’d never been to a supermarket the day before a potential natural disaster before. It didn’t occur to me how utterly mobbed it would be. It took me 20 minutes of ducking through people and trolleys and small children just to hustle myself a basket. Then there was the question of what to buy. Coming from England, where no freak weather ever happens, I felt quite uninitiated into the process of panic buying. I was worried, going round just picking up normal things like cereal and yoghurt. ‘Fool!’ the cashier is going to think as I go to pay for my goods, ‘she’s only buying regular food-items! Where’s her 6 kilo bag of oats, where’s her month’s supply of crackers? What an amateur!’ I embarrassedly presented my goods at the till, chucking in a pack of gum and some m&ms for good measure, as people around me were clearing shelves of paper towels and crisps as they passed them in the queue. I’m still worried I didn’t buy the last bag of bagels. Loads of people had bagels. I’m missing out by not having bagels. I bet there’s something that happens during a hurricane where bagels are really useful…

Sandy

It’s 5pm on Sunday the 28th October, and I’ve just got home, eaten, and set myself up in front of my laptop. Hurricane Sandy is heading to New York, due to flood our coastal areas and blow our power lines down with 35-55mph winds in about 27 hours. The subways will all be shut down in less than two hours. Having stocked up on tinned goods, bottled water, and checked that my phone’s torch setting still works (it’s an old sony, not a snazzy iphone. So when I charge it tonight, it will actually last me until next Wednesday and not run out of battery 3 hours later. It will also survive if I drop it down the stairs or spill detergent on it – and I know these things through experience. So I hope my mum will finally stop hounding me to get a smart phone. I just don’t trust things you can’t fix with sellotape. I hope you now see the advantage), I’m officially ‘prepared’. In anticipation of potentially not leaving my small apartment until Wednesday morning, and as this is my first hurricane, I thought I might write some ‘diary entries’ to keep myself occupied. Who knows, if cabin fever properly sets in, this may turn into a thrilling, real-time chart of my descent into madness, on the perfect gothic backdrop of the worst storm in New York history, the week of Halloween. One can only hope.