Back in my youth when farms here in Devon were miniscule in size compared to what they are now, herds of milking cows, which would be part of the livestock complement of a majority of these holdings, would inevitably be modest in terms of numbers.

On our 70 acres high up on the Bere Peninsula, my parents kept a herd of about a dozen – along with sheep plus horticultural cash crops such as daffodils, strawberries and potatoes. Like many other farmers, my parents gave all the milkers individual names – female, of course, but nothing exotic. Winter time would see these hardy brown beasts buffeted by numerous storms and gales coming from the Atlantic; such would hurtle up the Tamar and at times threaten the roof of our exposed farmhouse. However, no matter how intense they were, how destructive, unlike our bovines they were anonymous.

The exact opposite is the case in these days; dairy farms now cover many hundreds, even thousands of acres, and are occupied by vast herds of milk producing animals; thus it is impossible to give them names. Rather, they have numbers (also, unlike so many transient refugees in the world today, they have passports). The opposite, however, tends to be the case when it comes to storms and tempests – so many now are given monikers, alternately female and male.

Quite recently we suffered ‘Storm Arwen’; as it came from the north it was bitter with a chill factor which might well have brought a shiver to a polar bear. Whilst chaining myself to a radiator and imbibing a liberal slug of ‘amber nectar’ from Scotland (all in the pursuit of keeping warm, I must emphasise), it occurred to me that the seemingly ever increasing periods of meteorological turbulence could be personalised and put into categories each with a distinctive name and description (political, though metaphorical) and with certain reasonably constant facets.

Along these lines there could be ‘Boris Storms’; rumbustious (though rarely life threatening) bouts where the winds blow in many directions, often, it would seem, at the same time. These would contrast with the ‘Keir Squalls’; such tending to occur only in London and only blowing in one direction – towards that emanating from ‘Boris’. Another series of gales which tend to travel a short distance are Gallic – the ‘Macron Typhoons’. These usually begin in Paris and end up in London but contain relatively little menace. More sinister are the ‘Putin Blizzards’ from the east. These are chilling and mischievous assaults on our well-being and way of life and need to be taken seriously.

Further afield we find the ‘Taliban Dust Storms’ these can be hazardous events which take everyone by surprise but then linger and threaten the welfare of everybody in the region, especially females. In the same area of the world the ‘Ayatollah Hurricane’ is to be found – savage, malevolent cyclones which strike and destabilise so much of Asia and Africa; indeed, its bitter winds can cause political mayhem here in the west also.

Amongst the most prominent of storms and one which occurs with an almost monotonous regularity, are the ‘Kim Jung Un Tempests’ which always develop in that clearly unstable climatic zone known as North Korea. These need to be approached with caution as the inclement properties within them could well contain nuclear missiles – and, almost invariably, such are directed towards the west.

Mind you, much closer to home, we need to keep our attention on the hostile windstorms emanating from north of us; we must beware of the ‘Sturgeon Twister’. This is an almost constant blast of Arctic air directed at England and the English the sole intention of which would seem to be to break up our precious United Kingdom. There are, too, regular fronts of hostile, often threatening and drenching storms coming from the European Union, the ‘Brussels Monsoons’ – again, affecting solely the British Isles.

Mind you, whilst pinpointing these manifold meteorological disruptions which torment, increasingly, a troubled world, it is only fair to mention one which seems to have blown itself out. This is the ‘Trump Tornado’; for four years this erratic, at times seemingly unstable and somewhat anarchic turbulence, from the west, threatened to create political earthquakes worldwide, but now from this direction comes a balmy, almost relaxing – though possibly a touch ineffectual – airflow which could well be entitled the ‘Biden Breeze’.

This is an observation on my part as opposed to a criticism; for our troubled times would be less so if more leaders showed restraint – statesmanship, in fact. For the eccentricities, power seeking, egotism plus corrupt pursuits which characterise so many in world politics leads inevitably to a globe vulnerable to a tsunami of instability and injustice which threatens us all; stormy times, indeed.