Last week I went (rather weakly, because I had a feverish cold) to my exercise class, and some way through the class, which is held in a studio with a river view, the door suddenly blew open, nearly crashing into the woman next to me. Luckily she moved quickly out of the way, and we closed it again. Our instructor Holly, having moved herself into the place in front of the door to hold it shut, continued to lead us in our exertions. Then she said: "I thought we'd seen the last of Gareth".
I looked around the room to try to figure out who Gareth might be. Why did she want to not see Gareth again? It wasn't like Holly to give voice to strong negative opinions.
And then I remembered that now the winds have names! And this one is called Gareth!
Later still I found myself singing: "They call the wind Mariah" a song from Paint Your Wagon, that goes:
Away out here they've got a name /For rain and wind and fire /The rain is Tess, The fire's Joe
And they call the wind Mariah
A lot of tosh, of course, but if you call the wind Mariah, habitually, then that is the name of the wind, but if you suddenly decide that the wind is called Gareth this week, and Hannah next week, nobody knows what you're talking about. The wind is still blowing hard enough to make it quite unpleasant outside, (not much allotment digging for me) and it might be Gareth out there and it might be Hannah, and is it worth keeping up with the changing name of the March winds?
