What a great sleep. Must have been exhausted after all that throwing yesterday.
Left for the swimming pool extremely early and in the dark – at 06.00, to be precise. The heavy rain of yesterday had clearly continued overnight and it was also cold.
I knew bits of the road near Hagbourne would be flooded, and I was not wrong. I felt the car was almost ready to stall and found the water scary.
The pool was pleasantly busy and I was able to plough up and down without too much difficulty but with a very bored feeling.
My journey home was not so clever because I chose an alternative route but missed the Wallingford turn. I ended up on the A34 which was not really part of the plan. But I did avoid deep floods. The sun was trying to shine by now.
By the time I arrived home, I just had time to shower before the lovely Loren arrived to clean the house.
I left her to it and went to walk H in soggy Cholsey Meadows. We didn’t make it to relax on the bench due to some mysterious SSE goings on and official vehicles parked close. There was not really time anyway. They have been tinkering around out there for a few days, in cahoots with Thames Water. Though the latter were probably just discharging sewage into our lovely river.
You can see my bench in the photo surrounded by intimidating vehicles.
I was out of cash. I have little need for it these days, but cleaners prefer to be paid in cash. And I had scraped up my last few pounds to pay Loren. But you are lucky if you can find a working cash machine. Loads have been taken away or shut down. The one at Waitrose no longer functions. Of course, a sensible person would have visited an ATM at Didcot, whilst on the swimming trip. There is a large retail park there so there must be a cash point somewhere. Any sensible person would have ignored the fact they were only wearing a dry robe, and would have made a furtive visit to the cash dispenser. A sensible person would have taken the bank card with them to do this. But a sensible person I am not. And phones are not yet clever enough to extract cash from a machine.
So this unsensible person visited the Asda Garage in Pangbourne, on the way to Aldermaston, so she could raid the flashy Asda green cash machine. Thank you Asda.
We then took ourselves, the long way round, to Aldermaston Wharf, to the Butt Inn, where we met up with Jane and Sue. Sue is recovering from a nasty chesty cough. But it was good to see them again. It was very quiet.
The Butt Inn has been quite tricky to reach since the start of the year due to strengthening measures of the wharf bridge. They are due to finish in March.
H relaxed on their floor with a bowl of water and some doggy biscuits.
As we left the Pub, rain was absolutely bucketing down once more. So we splashed our way back home and looked over the widespread floods. Gatehampton looked particularly bad. In fact Oppos Farm ( a sheep farming charitable enterprise for veterans) had had to rescue some of their sheep. The sun was shining again when we arrived home.
Once home, the predictable happened.
I wonder why the Spanish did not learn the lessons from Grenfell – it seems that they did not heed the fact that external cladding could be a conduit for fire in buildings. Sad for those who died. Perhaps the lesson will spread.
I can tell you that I spent a lot of the evening snoozing and it did not stop when I crawled into bed.
Feb 2020
Feb 2021
Feb 2022
Thought for the Day
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