I'm writing this from a desk in a public library because as of the time of writing Storm Ophelia has recently passed over.
Now we've had storms before while I've been living here, many winter storms coming in off the Atlantic that would amaze you with their ferocity.
We've lost a tree before and one time in particular I remember a sound like a plane landing at the front door. When we got up the next morning a shed we had in the yard just wasn't there anymore.
We've lost slates before and one year I had just finished Christmas dinner with over twenty family members when the electricity went off.
I'm saying all of this by way of making it clear that we are well used to a storm or two down here on the south-west coast. The sea is only ever a few fields away you see.
I've never known anything like this though and I'm not the only one. The farmer down the lane, who has lived in this townland, all his life said exactly the same.
It was a horrible, horrible day.
Some storms, you see, aren't like that. You batten down the hatches, light the fire, the kids climb under a blanket and watch rubbish TV all day and the novelty is almost cosy.
Not storm Ophelia, though. There was nothing cosy about this. Nothing cosy at all.
It was preceded by a day that made the meaning of the phrase calm before the storm vividly clear.
It was eerily still, eerily unmoving. It was as if all of the fields, all of the lanes, all of the trees were just waiting. There wasn't a breath of movement in the air.
In a way it almost fooled you. We went to bed thinking it probably won't be that bad.
Met Eireann though, who really deserve some credit for the way they called this, were insistent. Bring in everything outside that might take flight in the wind. Check all the doors and windows. And finally the direction to the entire country that, unless it was unavoidable or completely necessary to make a journey, to stay indoors.
The whole of Ireland was being told to stay inside. And they were right.
I can only reiterate again that there was nothing cosy or invigorating or enchanting about storm Ophelia.
It was a horrible, horrible day. It picked up and it stayed up for hour after hour. A roaring, relentless wind tearing across the countryside.
Visibility went too so that you could only see to the field below and beyond that a white, thick haze. No rain just a howling, torturous wind.
With luck our electricity stayed on for most of the day and we listened to the radio as a Met Eireann woman called it correctly hour by hour.
We listened as the deaths happened and the trees fell and the lights went out. We listened as the incredible reports came on of people swimming in the sea or going out windsurfing and marvelled at how you just can't legislate for fools.
And then just as the storm dropped and we were falling exhausted into bed the lights went out and it looks like they will be out for at least a week.
Going around the place the next day, a day of shining beauty and sunshine, it is hard to believe it will only be a week.
There are trees down everywhere. Power lines down on street after street. At the bottom of our lane there is a cable going across the ground from one side to the other and I can't see that phone line going up again any time soon.
There is more though than just a ferocious storm at play here or an unusual weather event.
As one commentator said on the radio the next day, it might have been fifty years since a storm quite like that but it won't be fifty years again.
Global warming will see to that and we quite simply are going to have to do something about that because if storm Ophelia is anything to go by where we are all heading is not a very good place at all.
It’s the world that's heating up and little old Ireland with it.
There won't be any escape for us out here on our island rock and these events have proven that.
We need to act and act quickly because its going to be a very, very rocky ride.
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