Keeping Cosy

Hello from a very wet and windy North Yorkshire. Rain, rain, rain. There has been rather a lot of it this week. The children's school and college both had to close on Wednesday due to the awful rain and flooded roads; not surprising really as they are both over the border in Cumbria. My heart goes out to those poor people whose homes and businesses have been flooded in Cockermouth and Workington. It brought back memories of 2007 when Hull and the surrounding area was badly flooded.

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Back then we lived in Beverley which is about 7 miles outside of Hull. I can remember being at work, it was a Monday morning and although I worked in a very busy branch of M&S, the place was deserted. It was raining heavily outside, I could see from the doorway that the gutters on the buildings across the street were overflowing and the drains in the pavement seemed to be bubbling up. It was very eerie and quiet in the usually bustling store, but at the time apart from it being very wet outside we didn't really know why. Then news started to trickle through; colleagues began phoning in to say they couldn't get into work because the roads were starting to flood. Then the water started coming into the store! Water was dripping from the ceiling lights and in the stock room water ran freely down the inside of the walls, computers and stock were hastily moved away. A radio was turned on upstairs in the office to keep us up to date with the flood warnings and more and more staff left mid shift to try and get home while they could.

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I only lived 10minutes walk away from the store, so stayed and finished my shift. I was surprised when I left to find my husband waiting outside for me with an umbrella. Firstly because he didn't usually come and meet me and secondly because he was using an umbrella which I'd never seen him do before. We crossed the road and turned down the next little street and then I knew why he'd walked to meet me. We had to wade the rest of the way home, the water being mid shin deep. I held on tightly to him, and asked why he hadn't come in the car but at the corner of the next street I could see for myself the main road was completely flooded.

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Back home we watched the water rising in the little ditch that ran along the lane at the bottom of our garden, luckily our garden sloped up towards the house so we were OK. My parents weren't quite so lucky; I felt so helpless when my mum phoned to say their garden was completely flooded and they were watching the water rising up the door step and lapping at the door frame. My dad had tried to block the air bricks around the house to stop the water from getting underneath and coming up through the floor. Luckily the water didn't come into the house, but they still needed humidifiers and a large fan to dry out the floors and air space underneath it. They did lose items in the garage which did flood. They still counted themselves very lucky.

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Up until a few months ago there where still static caravans parked in front gardens along the main road to their house. It's taken nearly 2 years for some peoples homes to be habitable again.

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So back to our little corner of the world, wet and windy but nothing too bad. Only one local road impassable but that's clear now. So the best place to be is indoors, all warm and cosy in front of the fire.

With a spot of knitting.

It's not really my thing knitting but I enjoyed doing this.

Have you guessed what it is yet?

BIG, BIG CLUE!

TA-DAA!
A tea cosy with little bobbles around the bottom.

Keep dry and cosy.

Fi x