Flooded!

Remember the snow pictures of a few days back? Well these images are all taken in the same places as those were. What a difference a few days make!

In actual fact it's not quite as serious as it might appear, we have a pretty funky flood control system going on in this little part of the world and when the water levels get too high all the fields are purposely flooded to save the nearby towns suffering. It is controlled to within an inch or two by a complex system of sluice gates and other paraphernalia that I have absolutely no understanding of! It works though, the water gets to within inches of us a few times a year and is then backed off. Pretty amazing stuff.

....and though I don't like to blow my own trumpet too much, I can't help but show off just a little that some of these pictures made it onto the local BBC website yesterday! Hey, it might not be Getty Images but beggars can't be choosers and all that! :o)






(Clickable)

Just another day in gemmak's-ville

So, I woke to no water supply at 6am, that, it transpires, was the easy part of the day!

Midday the water was restored and we discover quite rapidly that some dipstick has left water running somewhere in his flat. He is of course not in residence. The building houses a fair number of 'elderly and infirm', there is much panic among said elderly and infirm as the water begins to flood the four floors below.

The floor immediately below houses a man who is almost 90 years of age and blind. His property is quickly 2 inches deep in water, he won't let anyone in to turn off his electrical supply and no-one can gain access to the flat above creating the problem.

I can't silence the fire alarm which is shrieking, I can't persuade the blind man to let me in but he tells me he is trying to locate his power to turn it off!!!! Whaattt??? Stood in water, blind and infirm???!!! Noooooo!!

I am now joined by various elderly souls issuing me with information that the flood is making it's way rapidly down the other four floors....and flapping.

Why has all this suddenly become my responsibility?

Ok....'firm words' issued to blind man about getting the hell out of his flat please and now, 999 call made, this may not be an emergency of enormous proportions but I don't have the local station number and I do have an old man trying his best to fry himself. E.S. operator wants to know everything but what colour my underwear is, strangely I don't have to hand contact numbers for a complete stranger in a building of 40 flats! Stopcock located but of course its too tight for me to shift, flats lower down checked for anyone else in distress and finally old man appears, wet and somewhat confused.

Boys in red appliance show up (sorry, the usual girly 'firemen' aspect is lost on me....I was married to one), narrowly beating the shame-faced owner of the offending flood, access is gained (damn, he deserved to have the fire brigade break down his door) and we discover he has left his power shower turned on and laying on the floor! WTF??

Daughter in law arrives shouting the odds, (hello?...how is this my fault exactly?) and takes charge of blind man, fire brigade 'make safe', owner paddles back into his flat to find insurance papers and finally I can go get a cup of coffee.....all this and did I forget to mention that I had Hammy in my handbag the whole time!!

Well, I didn't know it wasn't actually a fire when the alarm sounded did I??....and I sure as hell didn't get a chance to just 'pop' her back home for a while.

She is one very miffed hamster right now.

Really, I will get packed for this holiday!

(Un)Health & (Un)Safety!

My place of work is a nightmare at times and at no time more so than last week!

There was constant 'infighting' and fallings out among staff and management, I use the term 'management' very loosely here because not one of them has the slightest ability or training in management and one in particular has even less in the way of people skills than the average bull in a china shop, the result being that two people did a 'no show' for a couple of days and the rest of us had to work harder and in an atmosphere that was somewhat less than congenial!
I tried my best not to become embroiled in the carrying-ons, thank the Lord I am on the road for the most part of the day (though driving through floods constantly and spending eight hours a day soaked to the skin did little to lift my spirits) but I couldn't help but say my piece on one issue.

For two hours before I hit the road I have the unenviable task of making an array of boringly filled sandwiches, for this a sealing machine is required, we have a sealing machine, just the one mind you, the other two are defunct and seem to have remained that way, the sealing machine seals very well, nay it seals exceptionally well, so where you might wonder is my problem.

Take a look at this picture (very poor quality I'm afraid, you will understand why it was taken 'poste haste' on my phone in secret) and you might just begin to understand where my complaint is coming from. This is the mains cable on the sealing machine....that sits on a wet, steel work surface all day long!!!! (and incidentally the inner insulation is damaged too)


Apparently I am being picky in making a complaint!!!

Add to that someone saw fit to put descaler in the water urn without bothering to put a notice on it to that effect. Yours truly arrived back at the premises cold and wet, made a cup of coffee, took two mouthfuls before realising just how horrible it tasted and the only response offered was that 'at least if my arteries are 'furred up' they would now be clear!!!

FFS!!!

Ok....I'm looking for another job!

The death of a disaster legend

The white van from hell is dead! I killed it!

Now, before any of you start making utterances about women drivers and all that malarky, let me fill you in on a few details here.

The route I drive everyday in the pursuit of making the lunchtimes of the locality a moment of gourmet magic is in the main on country roads. One of these 'highways' in particular is liable to flooding in a number of places. There is a longer route but after more than a few arguements with boss #2 I gave in and did as I was told i.e. "not waste time (time is money yada, yada, yada) driving the extra miles" and instead plough on through the floods when they occur. Assured as I was that a diesel angine won't give out because it has no distributor! Now this guy is supposed to be a time served mechanic among other things but even I know that engines are more complicated than that but having argued my corner, drive through I did...on numerous occasions over the last month.

Today was different. The heavens opened and my route flooded 'very nicely' in the middle of nowhere and as ever I gritted my teeth and went for it....only to come to a grinding halt in the middle of a flood maybe a foot deep, ten car lengths in width and a considerable length. This flood took over the road, went up the bank and carried on into the woods at either side.

So what was I to do? I was stranded in the pouring rain and my only route for escape was to wade out...yeah right, fat chance. I called my boss, the one who instructed me that the van wouldn't give up and requested rescuing...he was not impressed and as I had suspected might be the case (with his parents being the other partners in the business) he started trying desperately to wriggle out of responsibility for the debacle first claiming he hadn't advised me to drive through and then that he hadn't realised 'which flood I meant' (despite having claimed to have drive through it himself on many occasions)!

And sit in my small lake I did, with the water rising
above the doors and gradually seeping in...and I waited and waited and waited....

In the meantime the rain continued to pour down and other traffic wishing to use the route intermittently pulled up infront of me flashing lights or 'hooting', presumably to get me to shift (this is a one track road). Now forgive my ignorance here but there I was, knee deep in a small lake, stuck smack, bang in the middle of the road with my hazzard warning lights on..what exactly were they expecting me to do? Did they imagine I was sat there for the good of my health? Was my predicament not apparent to even the most stupid of individuals?

A large pick up even turned up, two builders got out, stood at the edge of my personal 'lake', asked me what had happened, then laughed.....and drove off. Hello.....it might have been nice to offer me a tow or at least have 'rescued' me from my cab!

Finally my boss appeared looking none too pleased and failing completely to grasp the principle that this was his fault....and he had come without a two rope!!! FFS!!!.

At this point my patience was wearing a tad thin-ish and I was very cold and wet so I pointed out that he might like to drive himself to a local garage where he might find assistance. He did...leaving me behind still stranded in my cab, the thought that I might be getting just a tiny bit disgrunteld very pissed off sitting like a fool in a big puddle never seemingly crossed his mind!

I won't bore you with the rest but suffice to say two very nice guys in a truck arrived sometime later and hauld me and my van to dry land and then to their garage where the van was pronounced D.O.A. Yup, I told him it would happen, I argued with him time after time but he wouldn't have it and yet, somehow now, it is deemed my fault that the white van from hell needs a new engine and is considered a write off!!

Belive me, I have made my position and my feelings crystal clear. If I had been idiot enough to choose that course of action for myself as opposed to under his insistent instruction I would be only to happy to take the fall...... but 'new girl' or not I'm not having this pinned on me and if I have to walk I will. I am livid. It's bad enough that he was so stupid but to now try and wriggle free of the responsibility for the outcome infuriates me....it's not gonna happen I promise you.

Hey...on the upside I get a different van tomorrow, surely it can't be any worse....can it?

Fight or flight........

......or behave like a damn fool?!

The 'flight or fight' response in humans, animals, birds, in fact almost all living creatures, is not a new phenomenon. Since time in memorial, when faced with danger we have had this in-built response to threatening situations, our mind recognises a danger and immediately floods our body with the various chemicals, adrenaline being the obvious one, necessary to give us the speed, strength and presence of mind to 'fight or flight', i.e. fight the danger or escape from it.

Not so it seems in some! Sure, there are those who have trained their minds and bodies to overcome the response, the feeling of panic and of having to 'get the hell out'. Emergency services personnel who's remit requires them to walk toward what the rest of us run from, armed forces personnel etc. etc. they have all had to learn to overcome and control their bodies natural response to threat, and with good reason......but then there are those, that sometimes I am sure, are just devoid of enough common sense to recognise a danger and consequently behave like complete fools!

I have been witness to this once before and again in a smaller way yesterday and it confounds me. Many years ago, in the late 70's, I was working in a West End department store that the IRA saw fit to bomb. Luckily on this occasion it was only a small incendiary device in a window space, but we didn't know that when the call
came through and it none the less resulted in serious injury for those in close proximity. Two aspects of the incident remain strong in my mind, the first was the almost overwhelming feeling of my body telling me to escape, to run, to do anything but remain where I was and the second was my incredulity at the stupidity of some others.

Whilst my job required that I remain in the building to evacuate customers and to help look for the device (yup, all sixteen years of me) there were those, that despite the threat, were so intent on making or completing their purchase that we had to argue with them to get them to leave the building!!

Yesterday I was reminded of this stupidity.

Mid morning at work the fire alarms sounded. I was on a break with a colleague, for a moment we considered if this was merely a drill but instantly recognised that
there are never drills in opening hours, the company is way too concerned about losing an hours trade to do that, and so we set about our evacuation procedure and left the building. Our location in the store meant that by virtue of the 'leave by the nearest exit' rule we were not involved in having to secure the building or evacuate customers and there was no apparently immediate threat to our safety but I was still aware of my flight or fight response beginning to kick in.

Conversely, as we stood, shivering in the cold wind watching the evacuation it was patently obvious that some seemed not too perceive any threat whatsoever.
Never mind the usual fear of panic in a situation presenting danger, no, some of our customers were sauntering about and almost requiring a cattle prod to persuade them to leave with any degree of urgency! Whilst in that part of the building there was no immediate evidence of fire and so panic was not going to be the order of the day, did they have some inside information that there was no fire in a roof or wall space, that in a store full of flammable materials there would be no explosion? Has shopping become of such importance in some people's lives that they will risk their lives for a purchase, have they become so desensitized by today's graphic media images that their normal responses have declined or do some people merely have the I.Q. of a peanut rendering them completely stupid???

Furthermore, as the situation unfolded and the building was resplendent with screaming alarm system and fire tenders sporting blues and two's, it's staff all stood in the car park and obvious activity by the fire brigade.......potential customers were arriving, meandering up to the doorway, apparently oblivious and asking if they could be let in.....and then showing displeasure when told no!

As it was, the alarm had been triggered by a fault but one wonders, had there been 100 foot flames leaping from the roof whether some of these idiots would have noticed anything unusual at all?!

I accept that having been married to a fireman for years I am maybe more aware of the possibilities but hell, it's not rocket science is it.........

So here I am......

....waiting yet again for my landlord to turn up, as promised on each occasion I might add, to make some repairs. This is the sixth day of waiting and thus far he is very conspicuous by his absence!

He used to be good, I phone if I had a problem I couldn't resolve myself and he would be here, in a flash, but no longer. Nowadays it's akin to extracting blood from a stone trying to get him here.

Most jobs I or PG do ourselves, we never charge him for parts, as we could, but this time the problem is plumbing, or more specifically the fact that I collect about two litres of water from a pipe under the kitchen sink each day, my understanding is that the water should be exiting the system via the tap, not a joint! I don't like plumbing, or rather I don't like messing it up, particularly as we live on the first floor with some other poor unsuspecting soul below us should I cause a flood.

And so, many calls later and on the sixth promise of a visit, here I am waiting again. Forgive my cynicism but I'm not giving good odds.

Why oh why can people not just call and say if they can't make it, it's not rocket science.....even I could show the guy the intricacies of a telephone!

Never in my life....

....have I had the misfortune, until this week, to deal with a company who are so utterly unable to deliver anything like an even half way satisfactory level of customer service.

We have all come across poor service, technical help lines that are neither technical nor helpful, impolite staff and inefficiency beyond imagination but the prize for outstandingly shoddy service must surely, thus far in my life, go to Wanadoo.

Friday morning I woke to discover my broadband connection had mysteriously disappeared, I conducted the normal basic checks and still nothing, I checked it on the laptop.... nothing and so PG had a try....still nothing. At this point he took over, hardware is his forte not mine but what ensued was an utter customer service nightmare.

Without exaggeration one or other of us spent over seven hours on the phone on eight separate calls. Each one took over forty minutes to get a reply, each time we got a different person in a different call center and each time they refused to speak to PG because he is not the account holder, despite my having set him up on three previous occasions with the appropriate authorization. None of these employees seemed to be either able to read information on their screens because each call necessitated we begin the story from the beginning or too input it in the first place. We were repeatedly taken through the same 'hoo ha' of testing one or other modem, of uninstalling and re-installing software and ultimately no-one could shed even the slightest glimmer of light on what was causing our connection to remain staunchly absent!

Finally, having got hold of a particularly helpful guy at BT, Wanadoo agreed to carry out a whoosh test on our line. If you have ever been through this carry on you will know that one cannot request this test on one's own BT line, if the ISP is anyone other than BT, the ISP must make that request.....only they don't appear to be very keen to do it!

So, whilst this test is underway, not even a dialup connection can be made and at midday we were promised a result by 14.00hrs. At 14.00hrs it was promised at 18.00hrs. At 18.00 hrs at 21.00hrs, at 21.00hrs at midnight....all this despite repeated 'promises' that 'this time it would happen'!

Along the way we had asked on a number of occasions to speak to a manager or supervisor but were met with complete refusal, apparently Wanadoo's superiors in the customer service department don't sully their days with real customers or real service!

At midnight PG blew his stack, enough was enough..... but still no joy, still the 'trained monkey' approach, though we were instructed to leave the pc connected and idle overnight and assured that by the morning the results of the line test would be available.......but you know of course what happened don't you. Morning came and no test had been done, in fact, a little investigation via BT revealed that it hadn't even been requested!

I think you can probably begin to see at this point why the prize for 'lifetime crap service' is being awarded to Wanadoo!

Among all of this the majority of Wanadoo's technical help line staff were bordering on the rude, they most certainly cannot be described as having any real technical knowledge or know-how, twice when we had their backs verbally against the wall and they had no answer they hung up on us, necessitating another forty minute wait for our call to be answered and having to start from the beginning of the whole sad tale again. They were mostly, at best disinterested, often rude and had absolutely no concept of the basic customer service principles of taking responsibility for, and ownership of, a customer's problem. They were inflexible, behaved like trained monkeys spouting company policy blindly, no one seemed to have any authority to do anything nor the wit to think for themselves and use initiative........and still, on top of all else, each time we called we had to go through the getting authorization for PG to discuss the issue palaver.....despite by now, that authorization having apparently been noted on the account on four separate occasions!

And so, yesterday afternoon, finally we were give the results of our whoosh test....and guess what ...those results were 'inconclusive'!!! Arghhhhhh. Methinks there is some fibbing going on there, I doubt it was ever done, a result of 'inconclusive' seems very 'convenient'! Wanadoo's solution to our still non existent connection is too give up, they can't fix it and have handed the issue over to BT, convinced it must be their problem. Memories of trying to deal with BT in trying to get this connection enabled at all three months ago, have come flooding back and BT's promise of a fix within forty eight hours is not being taken too seriously in gemmak's-ville!

In the meantime Wanadoo are not prepared to provide us with a dial-up connection gratis, nor pay anything other than a fraction of our phone bill if we connect via a pay as you go connection so finally, exhausted and beaten by this companies ineptitude and inability to provide any kind of customer service, we have had to pay another ISP and set up 24/7 dial-up connection to keep us online, for however long it takes to sort out the broadband debacle! ....oh, and to add insult to injury, Wanadoo it transpires, have fixed my email address so that I cannot send from it, via a different ISP's connection!

One thing is for sure, I will happily 'cut my nose off to spite my face' with this issue now and regardless of cost etc. etc. once this is sorted I will wriggle somehow out of my contract with Wanadoo and go elsewhere, come hell or high water I will not remain a customer of this bunch of buffoons any longer than is absolutely necessary!

Oh....and hell, I had forgotten just how slow dial-up is.....but at least I have a connection of some sort again now!

Here's lookin' at you

Much of this area has woken this morning to severe flooding, the local television news is carrying images of towns within 30 miles of here under many feet of water but thankfully for us, whilst we had torrential rain for most of yesterday it has been nothing like as bed as areas further west. There is a small stream to the rear of this property which over night has turned into a raging torrent, broken it's banks quite spectacularly and flooded the fields through which it runs but that aside we seem to have escaped lightly.....though it is still raining.

This afternoon I am forced to vacate this seat and make my way into town which has the potential to be quite and 'interesting' journey, the road I am bound to take floods relatively easily let alone after the level of rainfall we have experienced in the last twenty four hours.

I have to say I would prefer not to be going out at all, the purpose of my journey is to attend the identity parade I was summoned to last week so I can't avoid it or make my excuses, it has to be done so whilst I am having to make the trip I will kill two birds with one stone and pay a visit to my less than favourite place....the hairdressers! Ugh....any one of you familiar with my witterings here will know just how much I don't enjoy the hairdresser hoo ha and of course there is the decision to be made.....just a trim and keep growing or hack the whole lot off and be done with it. We'll see, I'll decide when I get there.

On the subject of the identity parade It strikes me that the process should be re-named for it appears that no-one actually 'parades' any longer, nope, technology has made it's way even to the identifying of a suspect and I am given to understand that it is all on video....somehow it just doesn't seem the same does it and I would imagine it makes it more difficult in some respects but hey ho time will tell, I just hope that I can I.D. the guy unquestionably, I know he did it and he knows he did it...... despite what he might want the legal system to believe!

It's no wonder the police get frustrated, all this performance over a crime I know with absolute certainty he committed but as ever it seems is the way it is down to the innocent to prove the guilt. Believe me when I say I have sat in court and listened to many a toe-rag spout absolutely unbelievably stupid tales in their defence and the magistrate takes it all in, behaves like cops and security staff lie for a living and return a 'not guilty'.....ok, ok, I know it's not quite as simple as that, there is the 'reasonable doubt' issue and no one would advocate any miscarriage of justice but hells bells, it just seems to have swung so far in the opposite direction that any one who feels like defending themselves with a heap of BS can have a magistrate eating out of their hand and escape punishment with any old tale of ridiculous claptrap.

Arghhh......don't get me started on that one! I'll stop now I think before my soap box disintegrates in the rain!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
And completely off topic for those who kindly asked, 'small cat' is as happy as a pig in muck again, chattering away and rolling around on her back relaxed and happy, she was even heard to emit a purr last night, something that until recently we thought she just couldn't do and have rarely heard from her even in her happiest moments. She spent a couple of hours scouring the place yesterday afternoon for any sign of the kitten, backed off from a few places where she could obviously still smell her and then eventually satisfied she was gone, returned to her normal happy self.

Katrina

So hurricane Katrina has done her worst and left the expected trail of devastation in her wake despite being downgraded to a 'tropical storm' prior to hitting land.

Sitting here in the UK where we consider severe weather to be gale force winds and anything more than and inch or two of rain or snow it's almost impossible to imagine the power of such a storm or the havoc and damage it leaves where it passes.

We have the power of images and video on television but it still doesn't come anywhere near recreating the real power and fear experienced by those unfortunate enough to be in it's path and be subjected to it's wrath.

Fifty people have sadly lost their lives to this cruel phenomenon of the natural world and £14 billion in damage to property and infrastructure has been suffered. By comparison the freak weather events we suffer here intermittently seem almostinsignificantt. Incidents such as the Boscastle flood of last year and the great storm of the 1980's seemed disastrous to us and yet in comparison to the havoc and trauma caused to thousands and thousands of people by Katrina, our severe weather is child's play.

I have long been fascinated by extreme weather, have always intended that when I have the means to, I will go on one of those 'storm chasing' holidays but that is very different to finding ones home and life suddenly decimatedd through an act of nature over which one has absolutely no control.

Incidents such as yesterdays in the US seemed once to be remote, certainly I used to watch news reports and feel concern for those in the path of such forces but the internet has bought it all so much closer. Now I know of people who have been affected and have had to evacuate New Orleans, I have friends who's homes and lives are close enough to have been watching the path of Katrina very closely and it all now seems far more 'real', our global village is getting smaller and smaller.

My thoughts this morning are with those who have suffered over the last few days at the hands of Katrina, those who have lost loved ones, lost their homes, lost their possessions and who have lost their peace of mind.

Live 8, neighbour from hell and near disaster

Yup, it was me, I hold my hands up, on Saturday night you may not have wanted to be living next door to gemmak.

As luck would have it all was not lost on Saturday in that I unexpectedly managed to see a fair proportion of Live8....thank the Lord for overruns, Harvey Goldsmith and the BBC production team may well have not been pleased from a professional or logistical point of view but I sure was.

I arrived at work on Saturday with a plan in mind to secure for myself the day off and watch Live8, or at least part of it. My plan failed dismally. I attempted to appeal to my boss' conscience and better nature with a small bribe, that if he allowed me to return home I would donate £100 to an appropriate charity and supply him with the proof....but he was having none of it. No comment!

Plan two, make an appeal to have the television in the canteen turned on for our lunch breaks....no go, apparently we don't hold a licence. Plan three, the radio, again no go, again no licence. My plans were all foiled and I set about my days work in abject disgruntlement!

The day passed slowly, I listened in my car during my lunch break and then finally at 20.30 hrs escaped to catch what I imagined would be the final half hour.

My drive home was unpleasantly eventful when I experienced what to date has been my very closest 'near miss' on the road traffic accident front....some damn fool boy racer took a badbendn seriously too fast, 'lost it' and came heading straight for me, joint impact speed would have been approx. 120mph and I had nowhere to go! It was one of 'those' moments, I braced myself, everything began happening in slow motion, it felt like an age but was only a second or two, I braked as hard as I could, swung my car as hard left as I could..... and still we remained almost head on. This was it, no more I could do, I felt the adrenaline flood my body, heard Joss Stone in the background and then with only a nano second to spare boy racer miraculously veered out of my path. In my rear view mirror I saw him swerve a few times more before regaining control. All thoughts of Live 8 temporarily left my mind!!

I am, as a rule, not easy to shake up, I have spent my life on massive motorbikes but this really shook me up. My heart was almost jumping out of my chest, my breathing was in panic mode and struggling, I was only maybe two minutes from home but I parked up on the side of the road, put my head on the wheel and heard someone shout 'fuck' at the top of their voice....it took a second or two to realise it was my voice and thankfully I had no witnesses for they may well have thought I was just losing the plot sat in the middle of nowhere shouting obscenitiess!

Trauma over, I gather my wits and drove the short way home where things suddenly improved dramatically as I discovered that Live8 was running by then, over two hours behind schedule. Yayyyy, sorry Harvey but you made my day.

I settled down, well I say 'settled' that is probably not quite the correct term for I spent the next however many hours,surroundd sound on, bass up, volume way above normally acceptable levels, dancing and singing along at the top of my horribly out of tune voice! Well, I figured, I only have one neighbour right now, he makes a fair bit of noise at the best of times and he could 'live with it' just for one evening. I expected a knock on the door, I was prepared to apologise and turn it down but it never came and I rocked until it really was too late to be causing a disturbance!

In the end I got to see almost all of the acts I had really wanted to, I didn't need a ticket, I was there, my body may have been in Scotland but my head was in Hyde Park. It was awesome stuff, Pink Floyd and The Who 'doing their thing' again after so many years was just incredible, yup I was back there in the 70's in an instant. Stevie Wonder as ever, stunning, Macca may not any longer be the 'Fab 4' but remains a 'Fab 1' and love him or hate him Robbie just ROCKS!!!

"What a night, what a day" ~ Geldof. 2.7.5

Tony Blair, George Bush, Jacques Chirac, Gerhard Schroeder, Vladimir Putin, Junichiro Koizumi, Silvio Berlusconi, Paul Martin, were you listening?

"Over to you" ~ Geldof. 2.7.5

Summer in Scotland!

(Click to enlarge images)

Leading edge.

Having crawled into bed on Wednesday night to the happy sound of the television weather forecaster making wild claims of temperatures nearing 30 degrees and unbroken clear skies and sunshine for yesterday, you can imagine my slight skepticism given that we had endured two days previously of rain like stair rods falling constantly and the associated dismal views and flooding.

It was therefore no real surprise to wake yesterday morning too, you guessed it, rain, more of the stuff, incessant dingy and grey rain!

Maybe, I thought, just maybe, those oh so cheerful sounding forecasters meant the promised upturn in meteorological fortune would materialise later on in the day, but by 3pm when PG finished work and we set off for our necessary shopping trip to ,very little had changed. The stair rods had turned to a soaking heavy drizzle but the temperature was barely struggling to the 13 degree mark, let alone the promised 30 degrees and things were not looking good on the summer weather front.


Above the cloud.

Travelling back late in the evening things were only getting worse, by now the rain had all but stopped but a mist had descended even to low levels and our speed was considerably hampered....and then a sight I had never witnessed before.

As we drove higher in places we seemed to pop over the top of the cloud and although this is not the Highlands and our altitude was not considerable, at some points the cloud was below us, we were in clear, pure visibility but all around and below us the cloud clung to the land, making its way in a gentle rolling motion, little wisps at it's leading edge floating against the green of the hills, a pure white ethereal 'wall' all around us. We stopped the car and got out, it was completely silent save for the call of the occasional bird, and whilst we were stood in absolutely clear visibility, fifty or so yards from us on three sides, the cloud obscured our view at ground level completely! Amazing.


Wall of white

Unfortunately these images don't do the sight justice, a much wider angle lens was needed..... compact digital has it's limitations but I was just glad I had a camera in the car at all, the day had not held promise of photographic opportunity and I had almost left it at home.

The quarterly hair horror

The dreaded three monthly hair appointment was today! Regulars will know my dislike of this necessary evil, I have blogged it on more than one occasion. I hate it, nay detest it, the faffing, the inane conversation centered around holidays and hair colour drives me demented, luke warm instant coffee and hairdresser egos are just not my thing.

Today's foray into the nightmare that is the hair salon was, it transpired, amusingly different. This establishment is for a small town, reasonably upmarket and at least boasts well qualified stylists, post 1960's decor, (unlike it's counterparts in the town, that favour the blue rinse brigade) and a comfortingly full appointment book.

A rare calm greeted me upon my arrival, only one or two clients instead of the usual melee where apparent and thankfully my regular stylist 'Fiona' was ready and waiting for me. As time has gone by she seems to have learnt of my dislike for the usual bowing and scraping afforded clients as the norm and has relaxed a little. She knows my dread of the backwash and instructed 'hair washing junior' appropriately, to only 'wash once' and 'no conditioner', thereby affording me an early escape from this neck breaking contraption.

As time passed and she snip, snipped away we chatted comfortably about all manner of subjects, we giggled and joked and all was looking well. At this point things became a little strange, we noticed suddenly that we were alone, the other staff had all 'disappeared'. Little did we know but this hair appointment was about to become like something from an episode of a poorly written soap opera.

'Go find out where they have gone' I suggested and laughing she disappeared into the back of the building, leaving me alone and half done. Returning moments later, shaking and red faced she reported there had been a disagreement of sorts and the absent staff where embroiled in an argument concerning the perpetrator of a large number of 'strange' phone calls they had been receiving of late. This argument carried on, intermittently spilling over into the front of house when one or other of these girls appeared, pretended to be working and was then summoned back by one colleague or another in hissing whispers.

Amid all of this and without warning 'young hairwashing junior' suddenly appeared in floods of tears....enough is enough was Fiona's response and amid apologies she ushered said hairwasher briskly out of sight. She returned minutes later, hairwasher had not it seemed become involved in the cat fight as suspected, instead she had just been dumped by her boyfriend of many months..........via text message..... Nice guy...... and was still wailing uncontrollably from somewhere out of sight but most certainly not out of earshot!

Professional it was not, but damned entertaining it all was. Ok, so the luke warm instant coffee was still appalling, no change there, but the conversation was improved and the entertainment was certainly more amusing than that normally provided during the dreaded salon visit!

Oh....and in the end I did get my hair cut!

Yet more gales

(Click to enlarge)

Over the crest of the hill.


Toward Lindisfarne.

If I thought the gales of the last few days where a little concerning it seems I was mistaken for apparently the worst has yet to come. The wind speeds Saturday through to Monday where in the low 30's but commencing this afternoon they are set to gust at up to 80mph..... thus far though we have been lucky in our little patch of Scotland.

On the west coast the situation has been far worse, Cumbria has suffered severe flooding resulting in the sad deaths of three people, millions of pounds of damage has been done to property and thousands of those resident in the area remain without power for the third day.

On Saturday as I drove my little car to work, battered by high winds and torrential rain I thought it could get no worse, that was until yesterday morning when things had progressed from 'challenging' to 'very challenging' and any driving skills I have acquired over the years where severely tested.

The journey was odd in that it felt a little surreal. The extreme conditions seemed to have disrupted the day to day operations of the natural world completely and confused the hedgerow inhabitants. The roads where littered with debris from trees that had suffered from the continual battering, it was apparent that overnight, local farmers has been forced from their beds to remove, by whatever means available, a number of mature trees felled by the strength of the wind and in parts rainwaters stood deep enough for me to have to crawl through, barely moving and wondering if I would make it to the other side without it overflowing the height of my car's sill and rendering me 'paddling'.

The wildlife was behaving in an unusual manner, creatures normally not evident at this time of day where still scuttling about manically, bedraggled rabbits were runnig along the hedgerows, birds normally soaring gracefully were buffeted inelegantly and two barn owls sat staunchly on a fence post, looking statuesque despite it being way past their bed time! As I struggled against a vicious sidewind over the Tweed estuary, which had broken its banks flooding the nearby fields, the resident swans, who have by this time normally moved off to go about their days business sat huddled and floating in places they don't, as a rule, have the opportunity to float!

What was most surreal was the view. Toward the end on my drive each day, as I come over the crest of a hill I am greeted with a wonderful panoramic view of the bay, the pictures above show part of that view, the whole town lies before me, it's red roofs set against the deep blue of the sea, the island of Lindisfarne sits on the horizon with it's lighthouse blinking and sea and sky merge into one indefinable background.

Yesterday morning as I cleared the crest of the hill the view was changed dramatically to a sight I have never before been witness too. The sea, instead of blending with the sky into one backdrop of blue, was brown, a sandy brown, churned up by hours of pounding from heavy surf fuelled by the winds, not just along the coastline but as far as the eye could see to the horizon and up the entire length of the estuary in the opposite direction.

The impact was phenomenal, and a sight I am at a loss to describe adequately. The light reflecting off the strangely coloured expanse of sea coloured everything, the whole town and view appeared entirely changed and surreal, dark and foreign to my eyes, it felt oddly threatening coupled with the sound of the wind howling around me and I was reminded of the horrors unfolding in Asia and of the absolute power of the natural world, the forces of nature against which we, who are so used to being in control of our lives have no strength or weapon.

It ain't like this in the movies!

I have somewhat of a penchant for taking baths in the winter, a situation that PG thinks is a waste of money.....we have a perfectly good shower he reasons, that doesn't use world resources to such extreme and doesn't require a mortgage to pay the fuel bill in spring!

Not to be deterred I still prefer to have a bath, somehow standing butt naked in the shower on a cold morning or evening isn't such an attractive prospect.

And so it was, that submerged in my un-eco friendly bath today, I pondered how like many things the thought is good but in practice the experience is not always quite what we would like.

Have you ever noticed how, in the movies, in romantic novels and in a plethora of advice on relaxation techniques etc. those doing the 'submerged in the bath thing', are calm, elegant and relaxed in a haven of sweet smelling, steamless pleasure? Not for them is there a neighbour incessently knocking on the door while you stumble, dripping all over the floor reaching for a towel and a robe shouting 'I'm in the bloody bath'! In the movies they don't run out of hot water, sit on the soap, sliding sideways risking life and limb and nor have I ever seen a 'bathing beauty' emerge from the water crinkled like a prune, overly pink and with hair in a tangled wet mess! Oh no....in the movies they are serene, beautiful, perfectly made up and with not a hair out of place!

So while I mused on this my mind wandered further into the 'it ain't like this in the movies' thing......... to watery romantic encounters. We have all seen it, the romantic couple, playfully making out in the bath, probably all tried it.... but how in Gods name does that work? From the outset its not good news, two adults in a normal bath? No chance, well not with any degree of comfort or romance.

In the movies no one has the 'tap end' burning hole in their spine or the plug located in a most uncomfortable spot. Far from the erotic and elegant encounters portrayed on video tape, in reality those attempting this feat, for a feat it is, become more akin to foundering whales vying for the tiny space and getting for the most part cold! The water displacement threatens to cause a flood Noah would be proud of and most certainly, never in the movies, have I seen a cat precariously attempting to walk along the slippery edge of said bath, about to slip in and cause mortal damage to tender parts!

Did I say I liked to have a bath?..........I think I'll consider showering more often!

Not again

© SuperStock, Inc.

Well that's it done, four days at work over with and in actual fact I quite enjoyed it. As much as I love my 'middle of nowhere existence', the lack of human interaction can wear a little thin occasionally and the opportunity to be among others is a welcome change. That said the five play days ahead of me are no less welcome!

Work bought with it this week a stark reminder that yet again we are rushing headlong toward the festive season. As a child I adored Christmas time, it was my absolute favorite, everything about it enthralled me and filled me with an un- matchable feeling of excitement that nothing else could come close to. As an adult for years it was the same..........and then I hit the world of retail employment and it all changed.

Christmas begins for us next week! From today the hundreds of lines of festive merchandise are 'rolled out', we have in fact had a number already available for sale for the last two weeks though very low key. We all hate it, by the middle of October there isn't one of us who isn't fed up to the back teeth of tinsel, lights, artificial trees and the sound of those damn novelty scenes playing their horrendous faux Christmas carols! By the time Christmas arrives for real we have all been well and truly de-sensitized to any pleasure there may once was in the festivities.

The reasoning behind this unfortunate and much disliked situation is of course the mighty dollar. Ever mindful of profit margins and market share retailers, fearing for their corporate lives attempt to beat the competition year after year and consequently Christmas is heaped upon the unsuspecting customer earlier and earlier.

There are greater minds than mine I assume, that have foraged their intellectual, degree qualified way through unending market research and statistics to come to the decision that this is the way forward in a world where nothing matters beyond money. The confusing aspect to me is that almost without exception customers complain bitterly about it. Their complaints are the same as those of us who work in the environment.........that Christmas is ruined by such over commercialisation and very little is sold until much nearer the date.

It is perhaps indicative of the world as a whole, push push push, spend,spend,spend, advertising executives and manufacturers flooding children's TV schedules with bright advertisements for all things attractive to the under 16's (and over for that matter), surreptitiously heaping burden upon guilty burden on parents already struggling with the financial demands of life. The message, that if you truly love your child you will purchase for him or her, one expensive toy after another, because without doing so that child will suffer abject misery in one form or another, is very ill concealed. There are in the UK supposed to be controls on this type of advertising but they seem to be nowhere in evidence!

I am not a religious individual by any means, I would describe myself as agnostic in fact but without Christianity there would be no Christmas at all and yet it seems all but forgotten. The Christmas story, you remember, the one about a man and a woman, a donkey and three wise men seems to have been completely abandoned in favour of the 21st century version, the one about a man a woman, peer pressure and credit card debt. Do children even learn who Jesus and Mary were in these days of political correctness, where education seems to be so multi cultural that no culture learns anything? I can only assume that advertising executives and the chairmen of the worlds retailers sincerely hope not while they pile on the pressure and bombard us with all things Christmas for a whole quarter!

Bah humbug!

All change and another plea for help!

Rescue.

Before I bang on about my current woes I just couldn't resist sharing this picture from the Boscastle flood rescue. Of all the the images we have seen this one has to be one of the nicest and as one who worries what would happen to her cats if a disaster struck, it is a reassuring sight.

Ok......my woes, as ever are computer related. The long running, missing comments delete icon saga is still the bane of my virtual life. I have as instructed by the techies at Blogger cleared my cache, temp. files,history, cookies. I have checked every single letter and symbol on my template, have reduced the security settings to almost nil and set this infernal machine to happily accept so much in the way of cookies that it would glady take onboard Huntley and Palmers entire stock!

I have restored back to a time when I knew the delete function was working, I have logged in on four other computers, I have disabled my firewall and virus protection and checked for a picture place holder......there is none! Still this problem is not solved and Blogger seem to have washed their hands of it. They say they can see the offending item at thier end and so it must be an issue with my pc.

Add to that I also don't have a quick edit icon and I am now, even more annoyingly, getting reports that some of you can't access my comments at all to leave a message, I am completely confounded, confused, aggravated, annoyed, frustrated, perplexed and very slowly going demented!

In a last ditch attempt at restoring this blog to working order I am today going to change to a completley different template. If nothing else it will make life easier on the eyes of myself and Alan who both struggle in our dotage with the 'white on black' thing. I don't in all honesty know how a new template will help but at this stage anything is worth a try. Does the phrase clutching at straws come to mind here?

Failing that I may be forced to entertain Haloscan again..... or God forbid, take on the terrifying task that is Movabletype!

Suffice to say my friends, expect some disruption in this little corner of the virtual world today and if I fall of completely for a time don't be overly surprised. Your patience and any suggestions are much appreciated.

Oh, and it's still raining.................

Yet another day in paradise

Birds on a wire


Paradise lost

Having scrambled out of bed after yet another night of less than 4 hours sleep, yes I was on here again, I have decided at last to give up the unequal struggle and finally admit to myself that there is just not going to be a summer this year!

Absolutely torrential rain greeted me for what must be the umpteenth time this year, as I forced my eyelids apart at 6 am and as yet there is no let up. The swallows, normally merrily on the wing at this early hour, where all huddled in sad, wet little lines along the phone wires, their only exercise being to keep shaking themselves in an attempt to remain less sodden! Ditto has parked herself on the doorstep thus far, ever hopeful of a let up. She ventured bravely down to the car with PG as he left for work, as ever her morning routine dictates, and then beat a very hasty retreat back to the doormat, for some weather monitoring from a safe distance!

I seem to keep posting dismal pictures of a less than appealing view but believe me what looks like fog is not......it's the heavy rainfall. I am certainly no meteorologist but to me it seems that we are now beginning to get our comeuppence and global warming is showing it's future intent.

We live perhaps 20 meters from the river Whiteadder which is looking decidedly over full this morning. Last winter it broke it's banks impressively overnight and turned most of what you see in this picture into a flood plane. From where we are situated it was quite a phenomenon to see what is normally a small river, become a raging torrent but for the guy that owns the stable and the horses on that land it was far less interesting im sure. We thankfully are on reasonably high ground but not so high we can afford to be overly complacent!

And so......I will be forced once having attended to the day to day responsibilities of a domestic goddess (Hmmmm) to spend my day on here. I have a few little 'toys' I am looking forward to investigating and a template of slightly muddled HTML to attend to..........as they say, every cloud has a silver lining and the inclement conditions mean I can play to my hearts content without even a twinge of guilt!

Excuse me....did I hear someone in the back there mutter 'get a life'??!

:o)

Boscastle

Boscastle Harbour

I woke this morning to news headlines that had the unusual effect of making me sit up and take notice. Rarely does anything cause me to turn the television on at this early hour of the day but the news that Boscastle in North Cornwall has suffered devastating flash floods is one of those occasions.

Boscastle is a place very dear to me. At about age eight my parents took us on the annual family fortnights holiday to a place a mile or two away from Boscaslte called Trebarwith Strand, a tiny village on the rugged North Cornish coast. It was here I was introduced to the massive tides the area is famous for and my lifelong fascination and love of the ocean began. The holiday remains sharp in my mind to this day. We stayed in a cottage cut into the cliff overlooking the sea, I did all the childhood things, played on the beach, walked the cliffs and learnt to surf but my greatest memory was high tide. At high tide the beach would disappear under massive waves crashing against the cliff face and I would sit with my siblings, in a spot designated safe by my ever watchful parents and watch the waves for hour upon hour...... I had only ever seen flat, safe beaches and seas before and I was absolutely entranced by the power and beauty of this new experience.

This place became 'my heaven' despite being almost 400 miles from home and when all my contemporaries progressed to international travel and holidays abroad I would spend every possibly break and holiday back on 'my rocks' sea watching. I spent so much time in the area that I became involved with the local village life and made some very good friends with whom I remain in contact. To this day, despite living where I do surrounded by beautiful scenery every day, Boscastle and Trebarwith remain my personal heaven.

So to hear the news this morning that Boscastle has suffered devastating flash floods, resulting in one of the biggest rescue operations of it's kind in the UK was one of those news items that made me turn on the tv and sent my heart rushing into my mouth. The thought of such devastation in such a historic and beautiful place is horrendous. Boscastle sits at sea level at the mouth in a picturesque small harbour cut into a steep valley. It is surrounded on three sides by immense cliffs and so when 2 inches of rain fell in an hour (equivalent of a months normal rainfall for the area)as it did yesterday afternoon, it is not hard to see how this catastrophe could happen. Thus far there are no reported fatalities but there remain 15 people unaccounted for and given the level of visitors to the area at this time of year the tracing of those individuals I imagine will be hampered.

We hear of terrible incidents of destruction day after day in this media driven world but when it happens a place you love and know so well it suddenly forces a stark awareness of the true cost to those involved of such disasters. I can't imagine the upset for those who's lives will have been turned upside down or quite comprehend the destruction, in a few minutes, of beautiful buildings that have stood for hundreds and hundreds of years.

The Cornish people are a stoic breed, more used than most to the severe conditions nature throws at them and will recover.... but today it is a sad day.