I felt it too! Felt like someone was pushing my chair from behind. I put it down to some weird muscle spasm in my legs or something.

Didn't know it was a quake till I checked the news!

Those of us here in California hardly feel them anymore. Glad you all in the UK had a little fun with not a lot of problems from it.

BTW I read with amazement many of your posts and rarely comment. Keep up the insightful writing.

Yeah, most of us think it is a large truck or something when we feel the ground shake a bit.

Now, when Loma Prieta hit in 1989... Different matter entirely. But that was a 7.0 quake. That one scared the he** out of me.

I managed to survive my one and only (so far) 'quake when I was in LA on my hols - 7.2 (no, it wasn't in Disney..........). It felt like the whole world was shaking. The sobering thought was that this was about 2 months after a 7.0 one had flattened part of Turkey and all that happened was a train derailed! No fatalities or anything.

Thank you for reminding me. It woke me up, I thought, was that an earthquake, I must check the news in the morning, and then completely forgot about it until now.

I remember one from about five years ago, I think that was slightly more severe for me (in York both times). Either way, it is a bizarre sensation.

As Keith points out though, we should be glad we have only minor ones here, and not the monsters that do serious damage.

I was in York for the one 5 years ago and didn't feel it.

I was also in range of the Wells, NV earthquake a week ago and didn't feel a thing.

Yet I would feel the nonstop commuter trains going through the stataion at the end of the garden.

Its funny what you feel and don't feel

I thought it was the goods train rumbelling past my house, then I remembered I don't live by the train track anymore...well it was 1 am and i was asleep!

I'm so glad I'm not the only one doubted it - though oddly enough my first thought was "thats an earthquake"...

My mirrored wardrobe doors opened and closed, and I thought it was my hubby thundering down the stairs from our loft office and causing vibration, then I realised there was no footsteps on the stairs noise, then the whole house shook violently as if someone was trying to push it over. Then I heard the rumbling noise and thought 'ah, earthquake'.
Made me realise that if I mistook hubby coming down the stairs as a 5.2 earthquake perhaps it is time he went on a diet!

I'm in Manchester and it woke me up, the whole house was moving back and forth. Then a few seconds later my sister called from her uni halls at De Montfort in Leicester saying she thought the building was falling down haha. Scary stuff!

I'm in Leicester too, and it was quite a shudder here. My cats all reacted and it made the mirror on the wall shake quite a bit.
Did anyone else see the presenter bloke on GMTV the next morning asking a siesmologist if the earthquake was "because of climate change?". Doh!

I am amazed at the hundreds of people around the country who had no injuries or damage to report but who phoned their local police and other emergency services 'needing reassurance'. Surely they realise they might be blocking the lines for people who really need actual help...

Glad I wasn't the only one who thought it was a spasm of some sort. I was on my bed watching a DVD and I had my head resting on my arm when I felt a slight vibration. I briefly considered a quake, but as I often watch TV in this position and end up with pins and needles and such like, I just shook the 'spasm' out of my arm and changed my position!

I remember the one in 2002 which felt stronger where I live than this one did. That one woke me up, but I quickly dismissed it for dad tripping over his own feet en route from bed to bathroom...

I keep missing the big picture!

I live about 17 miles from where that poor boy was hurt in Sheffield. I thought someone had broken into my house and was trying to shake me out of bed!

Liz & Josh (24w 4d)

Hi Tom
I live near Birmingham yes certainly felt it! woke me up, thought I had dreamed it, till hubby dashed up the stairs, incredible noise, weird feeling, Dudley had one few years ago, we felt that one a lot more, Re care home I work in a 'caring' residential home, we called ambulance yesterday evening, the paramedic made a comment that he liked coming to our home, as it was friendly,staff knew all about the resident and had all the info to hand, and that they always had a cup of tea when they were completing paperwork (hint hint)
take care
joan

I slept through it all. Didn't know a thing till I read about it next morning. Strange part was it was felt in Wales, but not 20 miles north of London.

I slept through the lot lol, but then i'm guessing the south coast was pretty insulated from it all :(
Saying that a tank could roll past my window and I wouldn't know anyway!

I loved the response on Twitter. All those little 140-characters-or-less reports coming in from all over the place, followed, finally, by a forlorn headline from the BBC by which time most of us had gone back to sleep...

I have slept through every earthquake there has been in my lifetime. Everyone was going on about it today. Is it really the biggest one England has had?! (what our local paper was claiming) though the paper isn't a reliable source - they sometimes put pictures of 5 year olds with an article about uni students...

I've been in a few earthquakes, and even the little ones, like 5.0, can feel terrifying if you're several stories up in a building. It's magnified the higher up you are. There's something deeply unsettling, right down to the lizard brain, about feeling the ground under you become unreliable. A 5 on the ground floor won't trigger that reaction. Consider yourselves lucky!

An interesting thing to do -- assuming nothing is falling on you -- is to keep track of the time lag between P waves, the first to arrive, and the S waves, which cause shaking at right angles to the P waves. The more time between them, the further away the epicenter is. (So, if you can feel it well enough to count and observe, but not so well that you can't count and observe, something big is going on a few hundred miles away....)

I missed it! :o(

Don't know how, I was wide awake and stone cold sober.... still I caught the one in 2002, so that'll do me for now!

that's a helluva femoral pulse ya got there!!!
;o)

My first earthquake (in the UK) I was on a train and my coffee jumped out of the cup. I thought it was just a bumpy ride.

My next I was in Taiwan and I thought there was an underground train passing under the building - then I remembered I was on the 4th floor and there were no underground trains in Taipei at the time!

I didn't feel it, but I'm past the disappointment, I mean I slept through Buncefield and I only was 3 miles away! I just keep missing out....

Totally unrelated but...

Whilst browsing the internet and wasting time using Stumble Upon I came across this link and thought of you. Having read your blog for sometime I thought you'd appreciate some of the Murphys Laws of EMTs
http://www.murphys-laws.com/murphy/murphy-EMT.htm

A general thanks from across the pond for your posts. They remind me again and again why I live in the countryside while working in th city.

And I will steal your line 'silly-o'clock'. Perfect.

I'm in Bolton and got my teeth rattled by it, so it was easy to be sure I hadn't imagined it. My very first impression was that for some reason giant and very, very heavy invisible people were vigorously consummating their love on our stairs, then I realised oh, it's the whole house shaking. Then Pol, who is a veteran of quakes told me in a blase fashion what it was. Apparently Scotland gets tremors reasonably frequently but we don't hear about it because there it's not news. Or something.

I'm up in DOncaster, and the quake was quite an experience for me up here. It wouldn't be an exageration to say that the who house was shaking - but I seem to have gotten away without any damage.

Quite an event...

Martin