After the 1987 storm, Queen’s Park in Brighton

I remember the great storm of 1987. The letter box rattled all night and my mum decided we had to go to school. Oh innocent days. No internet or text messages. We’d listened to the radio, listing all the schools that were shut, and St Luke’s wasn’t mentioned. So off we went.

It was chaos outside. Trees uprooted and branches everywhere, tiles had blown off roofs, phone lines down, everything that wasn’t secure was strewn all over the place. But we trekked on up Islingward Road regardless.

I think it was somewhere close to Queen’s Park, as we all climbed over a tree trunk blocking the road and pavement, that my brother said: “I don’t think school will be open, Mum.”

He was, needless to say, correct. So we went to the park instead. (I think mum knew school wouldn’t be open too, because she took the camera.)

Here are a handful of snaps* my mum took and which she dug out of the family album…

Queen’s Park, Brighton. 16th October 1987. With my brother.
Dan in Queen’s Park, Brighton. 16th October 1987.
Queens Park pond, Brighton. 16th October 1987.

*And snaps they are. This was the age of film, cameras didn’t have Preview screens, every shot was precious, and developing the film was expensive. So we only took a handful, and these are the most interesting. In this digital age, we’d have taken hundreds. Maybe even using our phones. Imagine it.

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