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Cuddled in her arms was a beautiful Birman male, a seal point with ears, masks and legs of a brown so perfect it would make a Swiss chocolatier break down and weep with joy. His whiskers were long and droopy and white. His mane was the pale yellow of the sun breaking through early morning mist, while the rest of his body was covered in fur the colour of the finest honey. Front and back paws were of the purest white. From the exquisite triangle of his mask two large eyes of the deepest blue peered at me gravely. I wanted to dive in and swim in them forever.

Roger looked down at his skeletal frame, clothes that fitted six months ago hanging like wraiths from his stooped shoulders and shrunken waist. Chance would be a fine thing. They put him in a wheelchair then, took him to the lifts. They were on the ground floor, 2, so it was down to the ward area. A set of three rooms, four beds each surrounded by banks of equipment that looked as though they had just beamed down from the Sick Bay of the Starship Enterprise. All of the other beds were empty.

The eyes were orange, orange as satsuma peel, orange as the sun setting behind the smog in the LA Basin, orange as Chaparral fire. The pupils sitting in the burning orbs were circular pinpricks of menace. Dangerous eyes, not-fully-sane eyes, and both currently staring up into hers with malevolent indifference.

There was a time before satellites and super computers when weather forecasting was an art born of brass bound instruments and teletypes. The Secret Life of Weather Stations celebrates those long-ago days.