Very strong wind, they weren't wrong!

Last night at about 7 pm the wind started to whoosh up. They had announced high winds but the day hadn't been too bad so I assumed that they had got it wrong, at least for our area. By about 9 pm you could here it howling through the shutters, something that I have become accustomed to as it is often windy here, and the house is very old. At 11.30pm I decided to go to bed and went to let the dog out for his nightly doings. As I opened the shutter I could feel the pressure of the wind pulling against me and all of a sudden WHOOSH!! The shutters flew out of my hands, the swing chair on the terrace was doing somersaults, the table was up side down and there were bits of I don't know what debris floating past my nose! The dog, as you may have guessed, did an about turn and sat quivering behind the sofa for fear that he may get blown away. After wrestling with the shutters one last time, I decided to go to bed in the hope that it would have eased off by the morning. I'm not sure what I was expecting to find this morning, but it certainly wasn't what I did find. The wind had ripped through the terrace fence, completely destroying it, and the neighbours new fence too now resembles firewood. The front of the house looked as if a tornado had whipped through leaving a path of debris, rubbish & broken roof tiles behind it. One roof tile had landed a foot away from my beautiful car, my prize possession!! There were trees down in the road, and all my plant pots were eventually found on the other side of the village in a tree! Thank goodness I didn't have any underwear on the washing line!! The satelite dish was blown up-wards so when I switched on the tv I was no longer tuned in to English tv, but some other foreign network that I didn't have a hope in hell of understanding. A little un-prepared to say the least, so next time they forecast "Strong winds", I'll batten down the hatches and remove anything not securely fixed from the garden, and, of course, put my car in the garage!!