This morning just after I went to bed at about 1AM the whole building wobbled, plates rattled on the shelves, something fell over in the front room… I was kind of spooked, although the whole event lasted only a few seconds and didn’t even wake Kat up. Last time I felt a house move was back in 2005 when I was living in Haddenham and there was a huge thump that shook the place. That thump was a single shock though so very different, at the time I thought it might have been a supersonic flyover (there are air bases all over the shop here), but that’s also something I’ve never experienced. The next day it turned out that thump was a gas reservoir exploding more than 20 miles away!

So, an explosion was the first thing that came to mind last night. But, while brief, the shaking lasted far longer than you’d expect from a shock wave. I looked out the windows, no telltale flashing lights or shouting (not that there’d be any if it was a gas explosion 20 miles away.) No mushroom cloud on the horizon (the thought did cross my mind, very briefly.) I had a peek at several news sources online and saw no interesting “breaking news.” So I went back to bed thinking that maybe it was all in my pre-sleep imagination!

It’s 13:00 now and I’m looking at the day’s news for the first time… it turns out the shaking wasn’t hallucinated, it was an earthquake! The UK’s second strongest on record and strongest in 25 years (measuring, according to various sources, anything from 4.7 to 5.3, and apparently there was a small 1.8 aftershock at around 04:00.) Pretty crazy stuff. A fun reminder of just how tiny and insignificant we are, scurrying around on the surface of this great big ball of hot rock.