Ooops!

Things didn’t go to plan today.

The weather was awful and so the drive to Padiham was pretty grim on the motorway. Spray was whizzing round like it is going out of fashion so I was glad when I got to the town hall safely. The river Calder runs behind the car park and when I looked over the wall I was mesmerised by the speed of the water. It also looked very high. The Calder burst it’s banks a few years ago and caused devastation so they have recently completed flood defences.

We unloaded the lorry and set up. Eva started to do the brief when the caretaker rushed in and said the flood defences were going to be put in place and the building had to be closed. When the river rises to 2 metres over the usual level the defences are operated. (It was just over 2metres).

We packed up and loaded the lorry. The powers that be phoned around our other venues in Burnley and the Prairie could accommodate us so we set off there. Fields were flooding in the rain and the run off onto the small roads we took was quite heavy. But we arrived safely and set up…again. Jess had a nightmare when she dropped the test tubes all over the floor.

The afternoon session had to be cancelled and so we had lunch. We had slightly longer than usual and as they have a driving range there golf mad Julie persuaded them to let us have some balls and some clubs. Janine, Julie and I hit a few balls which was great fun.

Just before the the evening session started we had a little 50p each sweep to see how many bags of blood we would get. We knew the last minute change of location would put quite a few off…and it did. I said 34, we bled 32. I won £5:50 lol.

We finished off and loaded the lorry….again. What a day!