Hurricane? Another dreadful few hours I'd almost forgotten

In 1992 I went to stay in Coral Gables for a couple of months - pretending to write a book, or maybe I really was.

Talk about the wrong place at the wrong time. We were bang slap in the path of Hurricane Andrew - at the actual epicentre - just two days after my birthday.

Never been so frightened in my life. We were listening to the radio when the power failed at maybe two in the morning.

Then it came. It sounded like a huge express train coming towards us. We piled the furniture up against the solid wood doors, through which water still leaked. The devastation next day - huge trees uprooted and flung onto roofs (or in our case the swimming pool). Extraordinary.

However, life got back to usual in no time. People were charging amazing sums for bags of ice - and of course the poorest areas suffered worst because of shoddy building.

Not to be recommended.