In the early hours of Wednesday 27th of February 2008, the UK experienced it’s worst earthquake since 1984, measuring 5.2 on the richter scale and it’s epicentre was in Ludford only a few miles from where we live.

At the time it happened I was asleep in bed and Peter was in his office in the little bedroom at the back of the house. All I remember is being woken suddenly by the whole room shaking violently. Apparently this had been preceded by an all mighty crash, which I missed, but Peter thought the house was collapsing and was very keen for us both to get outside as quickly as possible.

I’m not very good when I’m woken like that and wasn’t very biddable, but eventually we were both outside with torches. We couldn’t see any damage, but at that point we still weren’t sure what had happened. Was it an earthquake or was our house suffering some catastrophic collapse?

Our dilema wasn’t helped by the fact that we seemed to be the only people about. Surely if it was an earthquake our neighbours would be out too, or at least have a light on, but there was nothing and no-one but us.

Once we’d established the house was still standing and not in iminent danger of collapse, we went indoors.Thank goodness for 24 hour news broadcasts and the internet. We soon learned that it had indeed been an earthquake, and quite a big one too by UK standards.

Funnily enough it’s the second earthquake I’ve experienced in my life and both times I was in bed! Incidently, it’s true what people say, it was 1am and pitch black yet out of the darkness we could hear the sound of birds singing.