Deke

Posts tagged with "wetness"

Was that a mighty storm?

Wednesday, 25. July 2007, 19:51:29

They underestimated by 24 hours. The surge hit us last night. Of course, when I say "Us", I mean 'them'. We're still home free and dry as an Ausie's armpit.

The news is full of acts of bravery, heroism, and people being just plain nice to each other, so it almost seems churlish to rain (No pun intended) upon anyone's parade, but...

Vandals have been having a gay old time in abandoned houses, 'Anti-looting' wardens are scouring the streets, people in big cars are driving through flooded areas 'because they can', with no consideration for what the wash they're causing might do, and - live on TV - a reporter got her bum fondled.

Yes indeed. There she was, telling us all about the sudden arrival of the 'Look out. The floods are coming!' police on this small community, and up creeps this weird guy with a Mona Lisa grin. As he passes the reporter he leans a little to the left, down shoots his hand, one backside fondled before a shocked nation and he's off.

Having been filmed and watched by millions of viewers I suppose if he ever does get picked up and charged he'll simply claim that he can't get a fair trial because there aren't enough people who didn't see the event to form a jury.

Meanwhile the water's getting a little too close for comfort. All these pictures were taken fairly close to where we live, and there's been more rain threatened, although, to be fair, the Channel 5 weather girl did say that the rain that was coming wouldn't normally be a problem, it's just that it's going to mingle with what's already down here.

I feel better already.

~~~~~~

Today's pics © Dave Hart, Carl de Souza/AFPGetty Images, Matt Bullock, & the BBC.

6 comments

Tales from the riverbank

Tuesday, 24. July 2007, 16:55:17

water, floods, wetness, rivers

The floods supposedly peaked at around midnight UTC although the floods-rescue people are advising that there is still water working its way down from the hills and there may be occasional after-surges.

We've also been promised more rain. Oh good, I was getting worried that it wasn't wet enough over here yet.

I sat up to listen to the arrival of the surge on local radio, and inexplicably, given that they had been broadcasting 24hrs, they chose that moment to close down, handing over the channel to national Radio 5...

So I went to bed.

This morning there were a couple of new stories on the news

(If you catch my drift...).

A couple of miles upstream from here 3 holiday-longboats had tied up for the night. They awoke to find themselves apparently in midstream. After shouting to each other for a bit they surmised that they were in fact still tied up to the bank, but the whole area was now flooded. Unable to see where the river actually was they remained where they were waiting for the waters to go down again.

They didn't.

When you're anchored to pegs driven into the ground you're usually safe enough, but when those pegs are underwater they tend to lose a little purchase, and one of the boats pulled free. The downstream boat managed to get a line aboard and reel her in, but now there were two boats pulling on the one mooring...

They did what anyone would have done under the circumstances and telephoned the local radio.

Within half an hour two local farmers and a reporter with two tractors and two canoes were on their way.

This story prompted another boatman to call in. He too was anchored in the middle of nowhere, but he had been attatched to a proper bollard. These don't give way quite so easily underwater, so as the waters rose the boat was pulled slowly over.

Fortunately, falling out of bed awoke the gentleman to his predicament and he loosed off the ropes and lassoed a nearby tree, pulled himself up, and anchored the boat to it.

Then he realised he was now on the towpath.

As he said, what he now needed to do was to keep an eye on the height of the water so that when it started to go down he could push himself out again before he became becalmed on the path.

It sounds like hours of endless fun, this messing about on the river thing.

Today's photos © Tony Stoyle, David McManamon, Sang Tan/AP, Kirsten Wright & Rebecca Lacey.

2 comments

I'm a sandals person.

Tuesday, 20. March 2007, 02:42:38

wetness, sandals, shopping, Doh ...

I'm so into sandals that even when I was playing posh New Year's Eve gigs with well-paying function bands that insisted that I wear a monkey suit I'd wear black sandals, cunningly disguised by wearing black socks underneath them.

The trouble is, the English winter just plain doesn't mix too well with sandals, so I've been wearing foot constrainers like everyone else for the last few months, but this week the weather's been quite nice and I've ventured back into the sandals, albeit I'm still wearing socks with them, it's not that warm...

Today dawned bright and sunny, so once again on went the sandals.

While I was making the mid-day feast it occured to me that we needed to do a little shopping. We were running short on a lot of things, and we were almost out of milk. So after dinner we saddled up (OK, we got into the car...) and set off to the Co-op.

Whilst we were in there it started to snow. I stepped out into it and within moments my poor old extremeties were turning blue as the snow seeped into my socks. As usual we'd bought way too much and the shopping trolley was now stacked up rather like the models that that weird guy in Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind kept building. It was so heavy that I was skidding about all over the place, and by the time I got the trolley to the car I was almost dancing with terminal freezing dampness of the feet, and to add further indignity to my predicament, it was making me want to... erm- point Percy at the porcelain, so to speak.

I had considered calling in at the health food store on the way home, but under the circumstances we decided that straight home was a better bet. Upon arrival I had a stroke of luck in that I was able to squeeze the car into a tiny gap that someone had unwittingly left open outside the house, and I lugged the stuff in, stored as much of it in the freezer as I could manage before the cold pushed me to the point where it was a trip upstairs to the room of much relief or damp underwear.

When I got back down mum had put the gas fire on and finally I could rip my soaking socks off and toast my tootsies by the fire.

Bliss.

After a few minutes I slid my feet into a pair of nice warm slippers and went into the kitchen to make a nice hot cup of tea.

I'd forgotten the milk.

4 comments