Boss Radio

I had a slight water related accident in the kitchen, but I figured it was warm in there, it would dry up by itself, and it made a great excuse to go out and feed ourselves elsewhere. I popped a few chockies and a bottle of juice into the cooler bag and off we went.

One country tearoom later and we were jaunting around the countryside. We drove into a little village and stopped at the local Co-op where I bought sandwiches, milk, and the Radio Times. The sandwiches were for our later consumption so I popped them into the freezer bag, at which point I discovered that the bottle of juice had a leak. Fortunately the bag is waterproof (Well, except for the zip, and that, fortunately, is at the top).

A couple of hours later, with the jaunt over, we arrived home. I pulled the shopping bag out of the boot and at this point I discovered that the milk was leaking too, and had now glued the pages of the Radio Times together.

It was a slightly depressed couple who tried to get into the house about a minute later and discovered that the postman had been...

We do have a postbox, but the postman obligingly puts larger envelopes through the cat door. Today he'd delivered the New Internationalist and an LP. The LP was blocking the door. After some struggling I moved it out of the way and it was at this point that I discovered the New Internationalist beneath it. It was lying in my water related accident, or at least it had been before it soaked it up.

Wearily we entered the house and put all the bags down. Mum went to get her shoes off, I started making a cup of tea, then, after putting some of the remaining milk into the cups, I went to put what was left of it into the 'fridge. Mum had put the cooler bag down in front of it so I moved it. It was at this point that I discovered that she had put it down upside down.

Some days you just can't win.

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.