Plea for normality

And now it’s Scotland’s turn to disappear under water. Is there no end to it? Certainly not today as it rains once more. We continue to wring out the wet cloths at our back door. Only another couple of days now & then the new door will be installed & hopefully there will be no more need to do that task.

The last few days we seem to have been inundated with holiday brochures. The curious thing is that neither of us feel that fussed about sorting out holidays. We feel curiously contented to stay at home. The itchy feet have stopped itching, for the moment at least. Our holiday to Austria last summer left us feeling so relaxed that life isn’t getting us down. We had a momentary blip when all these grey days began but the excitement of coping with blackouts & floods has been sufficient to assuage our urge to travel anywhere. We just want to settle to our normal everyday humdrum life, to be surrounded by friends, to feel safe in our own home.

I’m not saying the urge won’t return. We just need something to grab us, as the booked trip to the Netherlands has. We’re still looking forward to that & maybe that in itself is part of the reason we’re not inspired to look further at holidays. Until we’ve had that one, we’re reluctant to book another.

Still all of this will wait until the new year that comes tonight. 2015 hasn’t been a bad year, better than some. But now I come to the real point of this blog, & that is to wish you all

Happy New Year

May 2016 be good for you all

Flood thoughts

We’ve started to go a bit stir crazy. It’s been a long weekend, without going out since Christmas Eve. So it is we ventured out yesterday.

First we bumped into a neighbour. We asked how she’d managed. Last New Year’s Eve/Day was the time when her husband keeled over dead, so we knew it was possibly a traumatic time for her.

It turned out not too bad. Her son & his family had come over to spend Christmas/New Year with her, to give her some support. However, they’d watched the news on Sunday & so had hastily headed off home on Monday. They’d seen the flooding in York, & living further down river in Selby, they knew they would be next. They rushed off in the hope of salvaging something before it was too late. As it was, they were uncertain how navigable the road would be to get home.

Come the evening we found ourselves wondering what our priority would be if we had a flood alert for our home. We concluded the first thing to do would probably be to pack a bag with essential documents, insurance documents for example, photos which are irreplaceable (though we did begin to wonder whether we wouldn’t be wise to put them on the cloud) & a few clothes.  To take upstairs with us, a bit of water & some food suitable to eat cold perhaps. After that most things are replaceable & neither of us is so attached to things that we would miss them unduly once we’d got over the shock. It might even be nice to buy a new set of books, pictures etc. Some things, though, would be a shame to lose. Loved paintings would be easy to move upstairs but old furniture that has been in the family for generations would be far more difficult. We could only hope the wood is so well seasoned that it would dry out okay.

The heartbreak & anxiety for all those families affected by the floods must be unimaginable. I suspect they will look at any long downpour nervously, fearfully, for a long time to come. Selling their homes will be difficult for a while unless they are prepared to take rock bottom prices. Temporary accommodation will be scarce as so many people will have to move out of their homes while they are dried out & restored to something liveable in.

And now we await Storm Frank to arrive this evening. We’re once again anxious as to how much will come through the back door, but know it will be nothing to what some people will be suffering.

I have to confess I love places with rivers running through them.  The water gives a place of peace away from the hurly-burly of a city such as London or Paris. But at times like this I’m grateful that the Lune, our nearest river is about a mile from us & there are cliffs between us & Morecambe Bay. There is something to be said for buying that house on the fellside overlooking the lake rather than on the lakeside itself, no matter how idyllic it may look.

Creaking on

The bright day didn’t last. By the evening the rain had returned. We watched the news on the tele last night. We saw the dreadful flooding across so much of Lancashire & Yorkshire & were grateful indeed that we only have the wet patch just inside the back door, & that of fairly clean water. Our hearts go out to those who have been flooded.

Indeed the news seemed to be just about unusual bad weather with tornados sweeping through the States, white outs in New Mexico & Texas, even worse flooding in much of South America, forest fires in the dryness of Australia, winds blowing umbrellas across the test cricket pitch in South Africa.

I find myself wondering how other parts of Europe have fared. I can’t believe we’re the only country nearby that has been so badly hit by all these storms. Meanwhile it continues to rain. We continue to hold our breath & hope.

As I write it is just after 9am, yet it is so dark I almost need to put the lights on. I suspect the Fox would have to. Such darkness only means one thing – more rain to fall on already saturated ground.

Despite all of this gloom, I had cause to ponder on the nature of happiness yesterday. I’m forced to admit it lies in being with the Fox as far as I am concerned. These days, as we grow older & more rickety, I’m rapidly coming to the conclusion that we’re a pair of flying buttresses. We keep standing just because we lean against one another, stopping the other from falling down. Together we are strong, apart weak. We’ll creak on for a while yet.