Babet, Ciarán, Debi? The Met Office’s latest storm names hardly invoke fear
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There is plenty about modern life to cause celebration and aggravation in equal measure...but it is never safe to make an assumption about how the different generations feel about anything, from vegans to scented candles.
This wee, old hand Christopher Howse and young gun Guy Kelly ponder the nomenclature of storms.
The storm that gave so much trouble this month had an Irish name, Ciarán, which radio announcers pronounced as carefully as Angela Rippon used to say ‘Mugabe’.
That was not enough to placate the storm, which I suspect had been a wild rover for many a year, a playboy of the Western world with a touch of the stately, plump Buck Mulligan.
How different Ciarán’s demeanour was from the behaviour we can expect from Henk in five storms’ time. Henk will be like the Amsterdam policemen played by Paul Whitehouse and Harry Enfield, with unfashionably long hair and a tolerant attitude to drugs.
If it seems odd that storms should have Irish and Dutch names, it is only because they are named by our Meteorological Office (which now calls itself the Met Office because we’re not up to anything longer) in cahoots with its counterparts in Ireland and Holland. ‘Everyone is welcome to suggest names,’ they say. But it’s choosing them that counts.
If this season proves particularly stormy, we can look forward to storm Tamiko. To judge from Kurosawa films, this will mean long exposure to a stair-rod downpour protected only by straw rainwear.
If that’s not bad enough, there is Walid to come. I might have led a sheltered life, but the only Walid I know is Walid Jumblatt, a former militia leader and for 46 years until May the head of a mainly Druze party in Lebanon. I wouldn’t want to pick a fight with storm Walid.
If a truly suitable storm name was wanted, what could be better than Storm? I realise that the most famous Storm was Storm Jameson. She wrote 45 novels. Anybody read one? Even her biographer conceded that ‘the reprinting of some of her books by Virago Press in the 1980s did little to revive interest in her work’. Her name was Margaret really. Storm was the middle name of her father, a Whitby sea-captain.
But if you ask me, we’re inviting trouble giving storms names. It encourages them to give themselves airs – chilly, blowy airs at that. Like wasps, they’re better ignored.
The aim of the Met Office is noble: if we’re all on first-name terms with storms – to the extent that we could recognise them in the street or comfortably bitch about them with the next-door neighbours – we’ll all be more aware, and then take evasive action. I just don’t know why they won’t go a little further.
‘Babet.’ ‘Ciarán.’ ‘Debi.’ All good names, all good storms (good at being storms), but I struggle to remember my own name sometimes, let alone those of my friends’ children, or the latest housing minister, or that one on Strictly who’s possibly-probably dating Vito. I have no chance of remembering a storm unless I receive more context.
So I propose the Met Office get even more creative. Full names. Backstories. Maybe even theme tunes. ‘There is a major storm blowing in across the Atlantic this week, reaching the west coast by Friday. Sit tight, I’ll tell you all about her,’ Helen Willetts could say on News at 10’s nightly forecast.
‘OK, so her name is Pauline Muirhead. She is 56 but likes to say she’s late 40s. A retired embalmer, she used to run a popular Sunday school in Fife until a scandal involving glue sniffing and some light Satanism saw the place close.
‘Pauline never married, but was for a while engaged to a thundercloud named Carl Beresford. Do not ask her what happened. She likes UB40 and Thai food, and can be prone to violent tempers. She is due in by dusk, and is spoiling for a fight. Best to stay out of her way.’
Vivid, detailed, memorable. They could mock up a ‘wanted’ poster, featuring a photo of an actor playing Pauline. Someone like Kathy Burke. UB40’s Red Red Wine could play through speakers in town squares. Then you’d definitely remember her, and definitely fear her. You’d say to your elderly parents: ‘Did you hear about Pauline? Sounds like a right mardy cow. Maybe take the washing in tonight and lock up the dog.’
She’d be more than just ‘storm Pauline’, she’d be a character, an event. And we would all be safer for it. Now, I see there is an Olga to come this winter. Wait till you hear about her…
