Tuesday, July 24, 2007

Wet Rot

Apologies for the lack of blog action over the last few days – I’ve barely had time to drink a cup of tea let alone tinker with the English language in an entertaining manner.

On Saturday the River Leam burst its banks and, at ground level at least, came within 3 foot of the Art Gallery where I work in dear old Leamington Spa. Hence Saturday lunchtime I was called in to work to help install flood barriers, put out sandbags and remove every valuable painting from the walls so that they could all be stored somewhere safe.

Unfortunately, despite all these precautions, the water managed to get in through the foundations of the building and our under floor store – directly beneath the main Gallery – filled up with over 5ft of smelly, river water.

Hence, yesterday – which was actually my wedding anniversary – I had to go in again as most other staff are away on holiday this time of year to help with the clean up operation. I had originally booked the day off so Karen and I could go out for a meal but it seems the restaurant we’d planned to patronize had also been flooded! As it was Karen was very understanding and we decided to postpone our day out together until today.

So yesterday saw me (begrudgingly) slaving away at work instead of stuffing myself silly with top nosh and gazing adoringly into my wife’s eyes. Not the celebration of 2 years of marriage that we’d planned.

Still, the clean up operation is now underway. Pumps are in place to empty the flooded store and engineers are primed to strip down the boilers as our boiler room also ended up under 4 ft of water.

At the end of the day, compared to other areas of the country, we got off very lightly which is a very sobering thought indeed.

As for me. Top nosh beckons today. And Karen and I are concentrating on getting ourselves through to the weekend – Saturday will see us heading off the Marazion for a week’s well deserved holiday!

I can't wait.

5 comments:

MOTHER OF MANY said...

Always the art student , my daughter wants to know if anything of worth was damaged(works of Tracey Emin not considered of worth).I hope you enjoy your night out and the rains ease off for your holiday.

TimeWarden said...

Happy Paper Wedding Anniversary, Karen and Steve, and hope you both enjoy your meal together tonight! Think of it as one you won't forget!!

As for the floods, I'm in Gloucester, a few miles from the city centre where the bowsers are empty but have just managed to obtain half a dozen two-litre bottles of water from Sainsbury's car park!

The biggest pain is not being able to flush the toilet (apart from the BBC sending us Kate Silverton!) and it'll be a fortnight before we have running water again!!

So far, no power cuts, thankfully, otherwise I wouldn't be typing this message! If I don't get online again, I hope you all enjoy your week's holiday. Have fun and stay safe.

Old Cheeser said...

Sorry to hear about the water problems! Although you say you got off fairly lightly I'm sure it's still a worry and a pain. Glad to hear that the paintings didn't get wrecked though.

I saw the news last night and the devastation is pretty vast. Sounds selfish but it makes me thankful that I'm not caught up in it like all those poor people in Tewksbury and so on. Although we have the Thames in London the central part hasn't really been affected. Anyway I swear that global warming has had a hand in this whole thing - look at what a cr*p summer it's been so far.

Anyway have a lovely and well deserved break in Cornwall!

Rol said...

Go see the Cornish Birds of Prey!

Steve said...

Hi Ally, no thankfully we removed all of the paintings from the walls and out them in storage in a flood proof area. The stuff in the hold was mostly display equipment and spare picture frames. Still worth a lot of money though and will be hard to replace.

Hi Tim,

Yes, we just heard on the news that it'll be 14 days before you have water again. That sounds aboslutely crazy. Things must be tough already without that little gem thrown in on top. I hope they come up with some sort of contingency soon. There must be something they can do!

Hi Old Cheeser,

Karen and I are pretty convinced this is all down to global warming too. We're beginning to wonder if this will be the sign of summers to come: a monsoon-like rainy season. The long range weather forecast for our holiday doesn't look brilliant but at least if there are floods in Cornwall it won't be my responsibility to clean up after it!

Hi Rol,

That may well be on our list of things to do. I love watching falconry displays so I'd certainly be very entertained by them!