MY friend Roz was woken by a noise and looked out of her bedroom window to see her wheeliebin fly past.

The big drama, though, had begun earlier that evening, 20 years ago today, with a Fishy tale. Since then, BBC weatherman Michael Fish has been trying to convince us all that he wasn't talking about southern England but a woman going on holiday to Florida when he said: "Earlier on today, apparently, a lady rang the BBC and said she heard that there was a hurricane on the way. Well don't worry if you're watching, there isn't." There was.

That night winds pummelled southern England like a Ricky Hatton onslaught. It left a swathe of damage and tragedy, taking the lives of people including two Highcliffe firefighters.

I was woken with a call in the early hours and told to get into work, sharpish.

Outside, the first thing you did was to check how far forward you could lean without falling. Then it was two steps forward to one back to reach the car before driving in the dark through power cut-hit places, trying not to hit branches and trees in the road.

I was working for another paper entirely then that happened to be also called the Echo and the one thing we were sure of was that it would never happen again. It did. A year or two later.

Coincidentally, the day before the Second Great Storm hit us a decision had been taken to get the newspaper street sellers in that town to shout out the front page headline.

And the headline that day was "Not again!"

Sure enough, the paper sellers there all faithfully hollered out the words: "Daily Echo! Not again!"

You'd surely never hear anyone say that in Bournemouth.