Chaos in the morning as Holly rang at 8.20 to say that my school had opened (it was closed yesterday) and I had ten minutes to get ready. I berated my Mum for incompetence as my school uniform was nowhere to be seen as did Jack as his cookery ingredients had all been put in together in an old ice cream tub. My Mum said 'So what, they are all going to be mixed together eventually.' Jack said 'You are supposed to put them separately in foil so that then I can do it properly and anyway the ice cream tub will show me up.'
I could tell that my Mum felt guilty for her general incompetence so thought it would be the ideal opportunity to press my case for a Tamagotchi which I had wanted for some time. I left a bit of paper cut out from the Argos catalogue with the Tamagotchi on it on the arm of the settee.
My Mum went to get the Tamatgotchi in town, but went along the railway line which she had used on Monday and which was quite pleasant when it wasn't chucking it down. On the way she went to the Post Office to get some coffee and overheard some pensioners talking about how, in the old days, there were proper flood defences and how council cutbacks had led to them being unused.
On the railway line she talked to a woman with a boxer dog about her experiences of the flood. The woman said that her kids were still off school but had enjoyed being pulled about in their rubber dinghy outside the house. My Mum said 'I think you've got to be careful about the water because there might be sewage in it and I am telling my kids to wash their hands all the time.' The woman said 'Yes, he was drinking the water but I told him to stop it.' My Mum said 'What, your son was drinking the flood water!' and the woman said 'No, the dog.'
On the way to town my Mum saw loads of skips and whole rows of houses had all their carpets out on the fronts drying. An old man was walking his dog on the end of a woolly scarf because he had lost everything including his dog lead.
Later she saw Julie who said she had lost everything, including school books and the kids couldn't go to school because they had no shoes. She said that her and Lily had stood crying outside their house knee deep in water when it was suddenly as if a plug had been pulled and the water had suddenly gone down. What had happened is that two men on the estate had been told about an old flood drain by the old people and had taken matters into their own hands and had gone to open it.
Jack came back without his buns because the cookers at school wouldn't work. More flood damage.
2 comments:
We have had a lot of rain, but I am glad that we haven´t had the sort of flooding problems that you have had. It does happen here also,when there is too much rain and the river floods. Luckily we are on a bit of high land and keep our feet dry. Hope you keep yours dry as well.
So sorry to hear about the buns - pass on my condolences - a double insult after being required to take non-standard form ingredients in outrageous container.
Hope the floods are abating.
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