What Water?

What a fun week this has been. Traipsing off to Birmingham and driving home in horrendous downpours, sod-all visibility, but the prospect of getting home to peace and quiet made it all worthwhile. Only, I had forgotten that the council are re-surfacing our village road this week. So I got back to find a smiling man with a pneumatic drill chunking away all of five foot from my front door. Ok, it wasn't quite the tranquil haven I had been looking forward to, but at least I knew I wouldn't be loosing half a tyre down the increasingly abyss-like potholes.

Then it started to rain. Not that it had really stopped, but there are states of rain here in Somerset. In the same way the Inuit have 30 odd words for snow, I suspect we could out-do them for rain words. When I got home it was drizzling, then it was misty rain, then a splattery shower, then ten minutes of rain absence (this is not the same as not raining or dry as there is so much wet and humidity that it might as well be raining), and then it really rained - not stair rods or the huge, golf ball sized raindrops that you welcome so much after a dry spell, just constant rain. I went to bed.

Thursday moring dawned to the sound of beeping heavy machinery, steam rollers and the monster tarmac machine lumbering past the window, but at leat the sky was grey and nothing was falling out of it! One should be grateful for every season and I did my best. To be honest, the colour of the sky was bright ad cheery compared to how I felt; I was deeply tired, hadn't slept properly for several nights and was teetering on the edge of my own black abyss. It was one of those days when it felt like whatever I touched would fall apart, did fall apart or was actively conspiring to fall apart. Come the early evening, my son called to tell me he has decided to move to America and funnily enough, that helped make the day better.

It's not that I want him to go - I love him dearly and value the time we spend together above rubies, and I'm not even sure it it's a good time for him to go out there with the recession that's happening. I am happy for him though, that he has realised that he does want to be with Ashley, his sweetheart, who moved out there just over a week ago with her family. She had asked him to go with her and he was torn between going, the possible opportunities and being with his girlie and the security of life as he knew it, all his friends and a secure job that he loves. I suspect he's had a very hard time of it for the past couple of months trying to figure out what he wanted and what to do. Now he has decided and Kim and I are to swing inot action to sort out as much paperwork as we can to help him along. Anyway, the net result of getting the phone call was to open the flood gates and I cried like I haven't for a long time (but only after I hung up).

Just as my face stopped leaking, and only because my eyes had swollen up so much there wasn't much space for the tears to ooze out, the sky started again; the pit, pit, pat of the opening chords of the symphony. Before long it sounded as though someone was hurling marbles at the roof! The conservatory caved in and leaked all over the place because of the sheer force and amount of the rain. The lane down the side of the house turned into a fast flowing river. There was lightning, thunderclaps that were as loud as I've ever heard and rain that wasn't as gentle as stair rods - it was like having a water cannon pointed at the house, the village and all around.

Now, we're good at wet in Somerset, but this was exceptional; even the cat woke up and looked up when the thunder was sounding, and that was something, considering he was sleeping off a large lunch of chicken breast. Then we heard "Flash floods in Somerset!" on the national news "Crewkerne flooded badly!" Oh bugger. Our little house is in Crewkerne and we have just finished rennovating it, decorating it and yes, just when I thought the day couldn't get any worse, Crewkerne flooded.

I'm just about to try to negotiate my way out of the village, past the tarmac machine and road rollers to go to Crewkerne. I don't know what state I shall find the little house in, but I'm a bit worried. I suppose this has, at least, made up my mind about going to the Wessex Gathering - I'm not. At least, I'm not camping. If I feel inclined, I might drive down tomorrow and spend a day there and just come home at night. It's a waste of a ticket, but if the little house is wrecked, the worry would probably dilute my enjoyment anyway. Keep your fingers crossed that the Victorians built my little house high enough that it's not going to mean starting the rennovations all over again.