Newcastle is California

[desperance]

Ah, if only...

There's actually a line in a pamphlet (1651, if I remember) that says "Correct your maps: Newcastle is Peru". Since when the line has been adopted and adapted more than once; Newcastle is apparently Lesbos, and also Fire Island, and elsewhere.

But last night, yay. Earthquake! This must be California!

I was in bed, like a good tired novelist ought to be; and wide awake and listening to the radio, as this particular tired novelist usually is. And the bed shook. For seconds at a time, and in a way that it never has shooken before. Enough, at any rate, for me to say "Okay, what just happened?" and have 'earthquake' on the list of possibles. Probably not favourite - 'subsidence' was also there, and the house has slumped before, its back wall positively bulges - but definitely there.

Unhappily, I cannot report how the cats reacted, as neither of them was with me at the time. And it wasn't - quite - dramatic or scary enough to get me out of bed.

*is phlegmatic*

(Why are you laughing?)

Still. Earthquake! Never had one of those before. One of my favourite young people was conceived in an earthquake - cue all necessary earth-moving jokes, to taste - but I wasn't myself there at the time. Now I was. It's a thing to tick off my life-list...

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

So where were you in 1984? Clearly on the wrong coast of the UK. My three cats all ignored it, including Horus, who is a wimp and scared of everything (the ironing board, random shoes, the marquis' blue anorak, the cat food tin...)
I do know that feeling of excitement, though. A typhoon hit Tokyo while we were there last summer. I was delighted: no-one was hurt, it was fascinating to experience and I'd always wanted to be in one.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

I am desperate for a typhoon. I keep hoping to get back to Taiwan in typhoon season, tho' even then of course it's pot luck whether the timing's right...