Windy Mystery

It was so windy last night! I, for one, was steeling myself for the roof to be lifted off the house and repositioned halfway across the suburb, or perhaps for the whole house to be carried away to a land of all-singing, all-dancing lions and scarecrows and tin men. Just an aside, what even is the tin man supposed to be? Is he actually just a guy made of tin?

As you can plainly see from the above musings, I’m a little scattered this morning. I’m serious about the wind; it was a little scary. It was the kind of wind where you just don’t know what’s going to happen: a garbage bin crashing through your car windscreen would be a more realistic example. Or, say, a mysterious, cylindrical, tent-like object suddenly perched atop your garden shed. The latter is what I woke up to this morning.

I thought it was a UFO at first. My neighbour, who pointed it out to me an hour or so ago, reckons it’s one of those portable hyperbaric oxygen chambers. Melbourne readers, what do you say? Have you ever heard of one of these ending up on top of a garden shed after a windy night? Actually, never mind that – have you ever heard of a hyperbaric chamber before?

Honestly, I only know what they are as of just now, since my neighbour explained it to me. These chambers are essentially a type of device used in medical treatment of a range of conditions involving reduced oxygen uptake, or something to that effect. Evidently, you can get ‘portable’ ones, although I must say that this thing doesn’t look like something you could pack down into a backpack. I guess the idea is that you can set it up anywhere, and don’t necessarily need to go to a hyperbaric medicine facility for treatment.

How one of these ended up perched atop my garden shed is anyone’s guess. I can only suppose that someone in the neighbourhood had it set up in their yard. Why? It’s all very improbable!