Open house

SIR – As a news reporter, my first visit in the aftermath of the Great Storm of 1987 (report, October 17) was to a house sliced in half by a fallen oak tree.

The bewildered owners, still in their night attire, welcomed me in as dawn broke and offered me tea while I took photographs of their domestic disaster.

A year later, I bumped into the wife, who said she was so glad to have met me again as she “owed me an apology”. Apparently she had felt that her husband, despite offering what hospitality he could to an impertinent stranger, while still in his pyjamas, “might have been a bit short” with me.

The demolition of their home was, in her opinion, no excuse for any coolness she had imagined on the part of my host.

Geraldine Durrant

East Grinstead, West Sussex