Tears.

      

      Well !! If things do come to try us I think we are all tried out. Friday last week brought us bad news and a flood. We where sat having a cuppa about 3pm when the rain started to come down heavier than what it was doing. Hubby got up to look out the window at the river running down the front street and commented how bad it was and the rubbish it was bringing with it. He then looked out the back kitchen window and saw that we had a waterfall running down the steps onto the garden bringing the slate and gravel that makes up the path with it. We went out to make sure the drains where not bunged up with gravel but they just could not take the amount of water that was coming down. Living at the bottom of a steep hill we get a lot of water in our garden but it usually manages to drain away. We lifted the manhole cover that is in one part of the garden to help but it was coming down so fast it wasn't doing any good. I went down into our cellar which is our utility room and the men's work shop, and stepped into water, I had gone down to get some tools to help with other drain covers. By the time we had lifted the covers and got back down stairs the cellar was knee high and rising, it was pouring in through a hole in the wall which we didn't know was there behind a pipe. The drains just could not cope with the amount of water there was coming down. By 345pm we had to phone the fire brigade to come and pump us out it was awful no amount of bailing out with buckets was going to do the job more was coming in than was going out and my boot was full. They where fantastic and we will never be able to thank them enough for their help. We have managed to dry and clean the cellar thank god it was just dirty water and not sewage that came in. Lots of things in the cellar where OK but I had boxes of stuff for the car boot fairs that I had sorted out  and going to sell next year which have had to be sorted and most thrown away. We have said more than once that we feel very lucky that it was the cellar and not the sitting room and kitchen that got flooded even though it is bad enough the cellar.
 In the middle of the drama of the flood my Mum phoned to tell me that my cousin had died. We had been expecting the news as she had been very poorly in hospital so it was only a matter of time bless her. Janice had cancer and was such a very brave person while she was poorly and through out her life really as she had suffered with ill health on a number of occasions, some people do suffer and she is one of them and she really did not deserve it such a quite lady would never have said boo to a goose or called anybody she really was a sweet pure lady and only 61 yrs old.
  My appointment with the consultant for my leg only brought me more stress as I have to have the boot on for a few weeks more !!!! I have to have intense physiotherapy as the doc put it, and that will wean me off the boot. I cannot wait to take it off for the last time and throw the thing in the bin,
all I want to do is walk around normal, go out in the woods and touch the trees and feel the fresh air and wind blow through my hair, it all sounds normal but when you have not had a walk all summer it is a dream, but when I think of poor Janice its nothing is it. I have been patient with it up to now for 6 and a half weeks so a few weeks more will be nothing I suppose, I will have freedom one day !!
   Sorry to moan to you all, you are all good listeners and I'm thank full that you are there. I am just hoping that with the run of bad things that have come our way this last 11 mths it is all over now and that things can only get better, I don't  think I have any tears left in me now. Love Jill xx