When we made our summer plans to visit a US state prone to earthquakes, with a ‘Big One’ overdue, it never crossed my mind that we’d experience a 7.1-magnitude temblor. The earthquake that rattled Southern California on 5 July came one day after the strongest recorded quake there in 20 years – but we hadn’t felt a thing the day before. Not even a judder. And, I’ll admit, I was a little disappointed. We were just getting on a bus in Beverly Hills when we received a WhatsApp from family. “Did you feel the earthquake?” my father in law asked.  “Not at all,” we messaged back, wondering what was going on. It crossed my mind that there might be another one, but no-one seemed particularly worried and we got on with our holiday.  The next day, we went to a baseball game at Los Angeles’ Dodger stadium. I LOVE watching baseball games, and this one was living up to all my expectations – perfect weather, hotdogs, an ocean of people wearing home colours and baseball caps. We were sitting right at the TOP of the bleachers, with an amazing birds-eye view of the bright green field fanning out below. Our team was losing, but it didn’t matter – baseball is America’s game, a fascinating window on US culture, and I’ve learnt enough about it now to know that there are moments, when the ball is hurled at 90mph, and after a batter hits it with the massive force of a blunt object, where ANYTHING CAN HAPPEN. Then, all of sudden, in the bottom of the fourth inning (British readers, that’s baseball lingo!), the stadium started swaying. And I mean, SERIOUSLY rocking. From our seats at the very top, it seemed like the whole stadium with its thousands of spectators might just topple right over. I grabbed DH’s arm as a few people around us calmly got up and left. But most people stayed in their seats, quietly waiting for the earthquake to finish. I noticed a couple of men who’d stood up silently motioning with their arms: Stay seated, stay in your seats, they seemed to be saying. I found it all eerily quiet actually. “This too shall pass,” I repeated over and over to myself, “this too shall pass.” I might also have told DH I was scared and I remember my thoughts going straight to the kids: “How do we get them out of here?” I inwardly panicked as the swaying gathered strength and I worried it might be the ‘Big One’. I’m a mom! It’s my job to think the worst. On the baseball diamond below, the players carried on – in true LA style.  Afterwards, we found out that rides at Disneyland were evacuated, as were movie theatres in Los Angeles. Near Palm Springs, pools sloshed water everywhere and chandeliers at a casino rocked. And in the Mojave Desert town of Ridgecrest, where the epicentre was, fires broke out, power was lost and grocery store shelves came crashing down. This clip of a news anchor reacting to the powerful earthquake (“I think we need to get under the desk”) went viral. Our LA earthquake experience seemed like quite enough drama for the summer. So you can imagine how utterly astonished I was when, a week later, I accompanied DH on a trip to Athens for my birthday, and on arriving I put my phone on and read:

 “Greek earthquake: Buildings collapse as powerful tremor shakes Athens”

You have got to be kidding? I thought. We didn’t see any damage, but a lady I spoke to, who’d been in the Acropolis museum when the 5.1 magnitude earthquake hit, told me she was terrified the antiquities hanging from the ceiling, and swaying violently, were going to fall on her head. “We all run outside,” she said. Surely that’s it? No more earthquakes this summer, okay Mother Nature!