As you’re walking home the sky gets darker, very quickly, and the air becomes very still. You know what’s coming so you quicken your pace, but before you can get there, there’s a sound like the sky being torn in two and then the echoing boom of thunder.

No rain yet, but you know it’s coming and you’re not dressed for it, so you hurry on down a suburban street. There’s another sharp crack, and this time you see the lightning, a jagged white spear down to earth a little way in the distance, but not far. You wonder if you should take shelter, but you are also enjoying the sheer force of it all, the power of nature making everything made by man seem tiny.

A very tall man walks past you on the street, laughing out loud like a delighted child, punching the air and clenching his fists as thunder booms across the sky like an artillery barrage.

You can’t help but laugh at his lack of inhibition, and call out, “Spectacular, isn’t it?”

He grins a wild-eyed grin back at you, and you wonder if he’s drunk or high, because you’ve never seen anyone so transported, so joyous.

“Watch,” he says, and he points a long finger at a lime tree just down the street from you. There’s another tearing of the sky and this time a bang, you’re so dazzled by the white brightness you just see spots in front of your eyes for a moment, and then it clears and you see the lime tree, cracked in two, slumped over and smouldering, and the tall man walking quickly down the street, his head thrown back to look up, laughing loud, exultant, his arms stretched out as if he could bring down the sky itself