The Night of the Triffids Read Online Free PDF Page A

to do with weather reports, wind-speeds and navigational calculations, jotted on the backs of old envelopes and sandwich wrappers, as often as not picturesquely decorated with an oily fingerprint or two.
        Now I find myself sitting here at a table, a dozen blank notepads in front of me. I tap a pencil against my lips. My brow furrows as I wonder just how on Earth I can recapture in the written word all those strange adventures - those sometimes nightmarish adventures - that have dominated my life since that fateful 28 May three decades after the fall of civilization.
        That was the day I awoke to a world of darkness. And that was the day the triffids once more invaded our hitherto safe island home.
        Some say the second coming of the triffids at that same fateful time when night refused to yield to day was too much to be pure coincidence. Some saw another hand behind it all - perhaps the divine hand of a vengeful god. Alas, I can cast no light on that (if you will excuse an unintentional pun). However, I remember a passage from my father's book wherein he contemplates the sudden blinding of the global population occurring at the same time that countless triffids escaped from farms and gardens. He wrote: 'Of course, coincidences are happening all the time - but it's just now and then you happen to notice them…'
        And so, coincidence or not, I now sit here in a very different world from the one in which I grew up.
        A colder wind than I have ever known before is blowing against this tower. Again and again the banshee shriek of the gale reminds me that, although I might have no natural literary abilities, I do have all the time in the world to write my book.
        Therefore, I shall write down what happened to me.
        And I shall begin at the beginning…
        
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        My childhood was idyllic. I grew up amid the rolling chalk downs and green-clad hills of the Isle of Wight. A tract of fertile land that only became an island some six thousand years ago when the sea level rose to flood a valley that is now known as The Solent. Since then the island has played host to prehistoric hunter-gatherers, to Roman farmers who named the island 'Vectis', to Saxon immigrants, and then eventually to Victorian holidaymakers, including Lord Tennyson who declaimed that 'the air on the Downs is worth sixpence a pint!' And, more recently, we few survivors from the mainland. I'm surprised I remember these facts from some history lesson of long ago when Mr Pinz-Wilks tried so hard to instil into me a little academic learning. In fact, I'm certain Mr Pinz-Wilks (who must surely have gone to his final reward by now) would be astonished, too. I remember only too clearly how he raised his blind eyes in frustration to the ceiling so many, many times. Sadly, I retained historical facts as easily as a sieve holds water.
        There, in the heart of the Isle of Wight, I shared a large house in the picturesque village of Arretton (population forty-three) with my mother, father and two younger sisters.
        As soon as I was old enough I roved away across the poppy-strewn fields, exploring and looking for 'Mantun'.
        This was the name I gave to my imaginary lost fairy city - a childhood fantasy that often perplexed my parents. And when rain or parental punishment for my deeds of natural mischief confined me to my bedroom, I'd grip a pencil in my chubby hand and draw pictures that showed a host of buildings as spindly as bamboo canes. Of course, when my parents asked me what I'd drawn I'd proudly reply 'Mantun'. My imagination was young and supple then. Entertaining for me, yet puzzling to others.
        My father worked mainly at home in his glasshouses and laboratory. He grew triffids with scrupulous care, then dissected them with that same painstaking attention to detail. When I was five or six I'd watch him mixing nutrients, which he dissolved in water, before feeding the plants