The Flood

HAPPY BIRTHDAY both Jen and Will I hope you both have fun days, although I surpose Jen yours is nearly over by now, so I expect that Nic is spoiling you.

Dad I'm sorry to hear of Mums accident, sounds rather nasty, sorry you had to cope on your own. But you both must be mightily relieve about the good news of the blood tests, poor Mum though no cure for the tummy troubles.

We are still a family with only one working computor, so there is a queue down the hall as everyone waits for John to finish work, so they can msn their friends etc. For Christmas we got Edmund a graphics tablet and there was some mistake made when installing it which was then made worse by trying to fix it and so on..

I have finally finished my three week cooking stint and feel alittle like I have been run over by a steam roller and I have every sympathy for Mum, never wanting to eat a lamb stew or a beef and carrot pie again, you can have to much of a good winter warming thing!

John has been up to the flat twice since I started cooking once to clear up and finish off the decorating, and once to hand over the keys and go through a few thing with the new tenants. He was most impressed with our work Steve!! Thankyou so much for going up to the flat after Mums Hospital appiontment and meeting the prospective tenants and putting the photos on the website and all the work you did when everything was being so difficult

Steve,The new tenants could not abide the sofas so John has agreed to them buying a new one and Oh joy! brought the old ones back here under the delusion that I would be angery with him if he chucked them!

Can you believe it we had a flood thank goodness it didn't actualy come in the house but Saturday night(19th) about 10 o'clock I stepped outside the back door to get a log for the fire and found my self ankle deep in water, I didn't think to much about it as it had been almost as bad on wednesday but by the morning it had drained away(and anyway I was to tired to think anything other than how long will it take for my slippers to dry). But at 8 o'clock the next morning John and I were standing in the kitchen drinking tea and John saw through the torrental rain that we had a river running down beside the greenhouse across the lawn and poring down the steps ( this was all hidden from view for me by the pool table, shorty!) filling up the terrace, the soak-away having already been filled up by the 'river' So we dessed quickly and having phoned the council for help set about trying to divert the 'river' that was coming down the Drovers road, down the little lane behind our house and through our garden etc. So with builders blocks and homemade sand bags(carrier bags, full of soil) we tried our best, John got Orwel up and out to us pumping out the water from our terrace and Charlie,council emploie whose garden backs onto ours arrive with drain rods and his son to sort out the blocked calvert causing all the problem, so by the time the council workers 'proper' arrived to save us the worse of it was over, but the distressing thing is that we now have about 10 inches of damp plaster arround the kitchen and my workshop, but thank goodness we didn't have to carry everything upstairs as John had anticipated! Sorry this is a little long winded!!!!