It is a bullying blustering wind and it blows for all of August and often for October too. In 1984 a westerly wind came down the Parramatta River at 100 miles an hour and lifted the roof off my bedroom on Louisa Road. I was not there to witness the bookshelves fall or the sliding glass doors crash and break into murderous daggers on my bed but my neighbour, the shipwright Arthur Griffiths, saw the roof sail across the street with its frilly Victorian lampshade still hanging from the centre of its ceiling. He saw it bounce off the house across the way and land in the waters of Snails Bay.Years later Jack Ledoux rebuilt that bedroom. He devised a system of shutters so we could batten down against the brutal westerly but, being a follower of de Selby, he also worked to remove any barrier between the room and the world outside. The shutters and the windows all slid back and tucked away as if they were not there. The railing slid down too, so when the building inspector had left and when young Sam Carey was safely tucked in bed, there was no physical or visual separation between inside and outside.What about mosquitoes?
