As anyone in the UK will know, the floods here have (by British standards) been horrendous. Yesterday was the worst so far.

Sheffield isn’t prone to flooding, but it is in a bit of an unfortunate position when conditions are right (wrong?), as they have been recently. We’re in a natural valley surrounded by hills, and five rivers converge here.

It didn’t stop raining for over 24 hours over Sunday/Monday, and by late afternoon on Monday, the River Don had burst its banks at Meadowhall and the Wicker, effectively trapping anyone who wanted to pass along that route. Just half a mile down the road from me, people were trapped on top of buildings. Two huge yellow RAF rescue choppers went over my house, heading down to Brightside to pluck people off the roofs. The Wicker was impassable, under around four feet of water, and the number of cars that had been re-routed meant that Attercliffe Road and the Parkway were bumper to bumper. I saw people walking down Attercliffe Road carrying suitcases!

Thankfully, although I’m just half a mile away from the banks of the River Don, the flood waters didn’t rise any further than the immediate area in Brightside. The latest news this morning is that the Ulley Reservoir, 4 miles away in Rotherham, is is danger of breaking. Engineers are working on cracks that have appeared in it, and the villages of Catcliffe and Whiston have been evacuated. I’ve never seen anything like it in England.

For the moment, whilst there are dark storm clouds looming, the rain has stopped. It’s forecast to begin again later in the week, but hopefully the flood waters will have receded by then.

I’m absolutely gutted - for financial reasons, my secondment has been postponed for the foreseeable future. Until various meetings and committees have been held, I won’t know if I’ll be able to go. It may be cancelled altogether, or I may be able to go, but not until later. It’s very frustrating not knowing, and all I can do is wait.

Dad came up to Sheffield today, to be in the house when a guy came to look at my boiler. I told him I’d take him out for dinner and a movie when I got home as a thank you.

“Stay the night,” I told him whilst we were driving down to Centertainment. “You don’t want to drive home in this terrible weather.”
“Nah,” he said. “I’ll go when we’ve seen the film.”
“Oh well,” I said, “I’ll just have to nip outside during the film and nick your spark plugs. You’ll have to stay then.”
“Shows what you know about cars,” he said. “Diesel engines don’t have spark plugs.”

A ‘gift’ on the living room floor this morning, left by Dorrie - a small dead mouse.