Whenever I hear – as I did today – the forceful sound of wind whistling and buffeting, whether out-of-doors or through a screen door or a partially opened window, I recall the eerie high-pitched sound of wind in the movie Satyricon by Federico Fellini. The plaintive sound captured the pre-Christian Roman world of debauchery during the reign of Emperor Nero. But its universal appeal is its unforgiving mournfulness, a poetic background to the tableaux of life both ancient and modern.

Wind customarily heralds change – approaching storm or alternating temperatures; clear or cloudy skies; clarity or fog. On the land, the wind blows the trees and scatters débris; on the sea, it curls the water and sprays the air. Inevitably its assertiveness has the effect to forget all the things that have happened or been done and to start again from the very beginning. It is Nature’s catharsis, a purge and release from repressed emotion.

It is an odd confession of living that the capricious signals of Nature – when permitted to insinuate one’s being – afford a reliable exhaustion of frivolity and discolouration.