Happy dude-getting-nailed-to-a-tree weekend! As Bill Hicks was fond of noting: "Where in the Bible do they mention a giant bunny that hands out chocolate eggs? You'd think I'd remember that bit."
Anyway, I'm in Hampstead Heath on Friday, enjoying the sun with a bit of red wine, cheese, `n friends. At one point I look up and point out what appears to be either a bin lid or a very large frisbee, twirling in the air at some great height. That's interesting, I thought, rather taken aback by the exclamations of astonishment and fear emitted by my friends.
This is because I was still looking up, rather than directly ahead.
On correcting this angle of neckage, I saw something that was really quite amazing. I have six independant witnesses to confirm this actually happened, should you find it rather incredible. I saw, or rather I should say, since whirlwinds are largely invisible: I saw the effects of a whirlwind, directly ahead of us. Paper and grass and twings were all swirling around a central point. This central point was visible as an intense flattenning of the grass in front of us, all the blades of grass pointing outwards from the center of the vortex. The scary/cool thing was- this center was moving towards us.
At this point, my friend Graham leapt up and jumped into the whirlwind. His clothes fluttered and flew around him, whipped around by the spinning of the wind (it looked really cool). He danced about as the whirlwind veered to the right and went directly into a tree that was covered with dead leaves, each of which was stripped from the tree and swept up into the whorl, at which point we finally saw the full shape and extent of the whole thing. Graham later said that he looked up, saw leaves extending up into the air a good two or three hundred feet, thought: 'Maybe this isn't such a good idea.' and quickly evacuated.
The whirlygig continued on its way, and while I ignored the rather strong urge to pursue it, we continued to see the bin-lid/frisbee dancing around in the sky at the top of the cyclone for some time hence. Graham tried to explain how whirlwinds form from bubbles of thermals or something, but nothing he said really explained it, I mean, it was just incredibly wierd and fascinating, I've never seen anything like it.
`sa funny old world.
d
This is a 
As the joke goes:
Jesus Wept!!
No wonder, someone nailed him to a tree.
Weird wind things are wonderfully wicked, he said, alliteratively.
That is insanely cool. On Friday I was being hungover in a flat in Hackney. Not so cool.
It's kind of cool.