Grum

I expect I’ve used the word grim to describe recent weather. So I’ve taken a sideways swipe and I hope the word grum conveys the feeling that today’s weather has not been pleasant. Grey and damp also describe it. The day started with very very heavy rain until mid morning, when H and I ventured out.

H was not keen at all but eventually towed her lead around the lakes at Cholsey. I was wrapped up in my serious dry robe which was really cosy and watertight. H spotted the tempting ducks, and, out of sight, subsided into the flooded bed of waterside reeds where she got a surprise and a soaking and no duck. That will ‘learn’ her!

It seems to have been a bad day for the roads today. The first inkling of a bad day on the roads was news of a bus crash on the road between East Ilsley and Compton. And that the road was closed. I breathed a silent sigh of relief that it was not in our neck of the woods. Wrong!
F and G informed me that it was the school bus to the Downs (Downs is their school, in Compton) the crash bus was ahead of the bus they were on. And they could see it leaning heavily into a hedge, and they could also see the children scrambling off it. No one was seriously hurt but there were injuries.

Fleur also later commented on the frequency of accidents on the A34 which the school buses use briefly. Today she had taken a snap pic of a towed boat which was jackknifed at right angles across it, so more hold ups on the way home from school.

And tonight, around 17.00, I’m not sure what was going on. But there was an enormously long queue coming from Wallingford to the Streatley lights. The queue tailed back beyond Townsend Road to the farms on the right and the left. I’m glad I wasn’t in that queue and was travelling in the opposite direction.
I later found out that the towed boat recovery involved closing the A34 hence the unusually heavy flow of traffic and queues on our local roads .

The road to Didcot is flooded again. I will just add that in.

After our walk this morning, I booked myself a treat of a trip to Dunster for 3 nights in mid April. The Luttrell Arms, which is very comfortable has an offer on which I could not turn down – 3 nights and 3 x 2 course evening meals thrown in. And H’s charges have been waived.

Then it was time for my swimming at Didcot. Unlike my previous afternoon swims, the pool was busy today – it was full of poxy tadpoles and their froggy parents. Luckily they were not near me but in shallower areas. A boy, of around 12, ( why not at school?) decided to get in the way of adult swimmers by ploughing up and down. And plough he did using the most extraordinary and unrecognisable technique. Two x front crawl arms and a kick and then some peculiar armless dipping up and down. On repeat.

He then received a warning from a lifeguard, when he decided to throw something weighted into the way of the lane swimmers.

Back home and having showered off the chlorine, I then went to visit F and G, and Ali appeared from her garden office.

It was after this visit that I registered the queue heading towards Streatley.

It was quite early evening by then so you can guess what happened after I arrived home. Sprouts were involved.

Thought for the Day