blowing a gale

I'm supposed to be asleep, but we're having another night of epically windy weather here in London, and the combination of what sounds like sleety hail and big, pounding-on-a-metal-garbage-can-lid sort of gusts does not a restful falling asleep make. And I am so, so tired.

Talking with Racquel the other night, we realized - in the same way, which I always find heartening about one's friends - that there is something fundamentally different about weather language in England and the U.S. Here, they forecast gales when something nasty is coming across the Channel, as in "heavy gales Sunday night and into Monday, with gusts of up to 50 miles per hour" or "gales hit the southern coast of England last night, causing massive flooding and knocking down 135 trees."

Storms we have, at home. Tornadoes and hurricanes, even.* But it's the idea of a gale that strikes me as odd. It's like living in a Wordsworth poem. It's like the heights are wuthering at you on the walk to the bus stop. Wind blows, but a gale buffets. The drama of it perhaps fits an island that is, let's remember, stuck in the North Sea which can and does get "cut off from the Continent". And a gale is more relentless, too, I suppose, which I'm sure is how it can feel.

But, still, a little part of me hears: "...shiver me timbers...this ain't a storm, it's a gale."

* this should in no way be construed as a dig at The Great Storm, honey.