Water, Water, Everywhere!

For the eventfulness of today, my photo is anything but.

Last night I developed a cough, the annoying asthmatic hack, coughing like a sheep on turnips.  I didn't sleep too well, breathing was difficult, the house was too warm and Ali was doing her best to sing us the song of her people at regular intervals.  At 5:30am, she had both The Boy and I up.  There was a noise of water, I put it to the back of my mind, maybe the tap had been left on for Ali to drink and after all, it was raining outside.  The Boy looked out of the window... the garden was flooded.

We grabbed our winter jackets, found the torches and wellies and I ventured out into the garden to assess the situation.  There's a small Beck at the back of our garden, most of the year it causes no problems.  Where it goes into a culvert under the neighbour's garden and under the road, there is a grid.  The grid is designed to catch anything that could lodge in the culvert where it changes to two smaller pipes and as such, prevent flooding.  Unfortunately logs, branches, twigs, grass, weed and leaves build up on this grid and cause flooding.  We wandered through the neighbour's garden to try and access the grid but with the fence down and unsure of its location, we needed backup.

By 6am everyone in the house was up and Dad & I headed back out with the rakes to clear the blockage.  When the water appeared to be receding, we went back in for a cup of tea.  We were back out again 5 more times, sometimes Dad, sometimes the Boy, sometimes assisted by the neighbour and sometimes her son.  On the 7th attempt (at almost lunchtime) the volume of water was less and it was finally level on both sides of the grid.  We could do no more.

In the afternoon we popped out to Reghed for a cuppa and a look around.  With my cough worsening (I blamed the morning's activities) I wasn't much in the mood for photos.  This shot of the patterned tiles was all I got.