Floods

We are fortunate to live well away from any danger of flooding.  The unceasing rain caused havoc in many areas and much misery.  I can just remember when the Thames burst its banks in 1928.  Water flowed up our street inundating the little cottages below us.  This was followed by a plague of rats, one of which made a nest in our chest of drawers.  Flossie, our dog, killed it.

When I lived in West Dulwich in south London our Victorian house had a large, deep cellar leading off the scullery. This small scullery had three doors and I suffered terribly with chilblains caused by the draught from garden and cellar when doing the cooking and washing etc.  In the cellar we kept the coal and coke delivered by horse and cart.  On occasions the cellar would be flooded, not deep, but a nuisance.  The river Effra was converted to the sewerage system in the 1800s to carry away rainwater and now ran underground.  Part of its course ran through West Norwood and through the large cemetery. where incidentally, Mrs. Beeton is buried,  and on under our road.  It went on through Herne Hill under Effra Road to Brixton's Water Lane. then to Kennington and into the Thames at Vauxhall.  One of London's underground rivers.

I had to  go down a number of steps with a bucket and shovel to fetch the coal and coke upstairs from the cellar.  Not a nice job if the fuel was wet.  On one occasion I brought the coke up for the kitchen boiler and was amazed to see three little frogs hopping round the kitchen floor.

Georgette Heyer Again

I have just listened to BBC radio 4 programme "A Good Read" where they discussed Georgette Heyer's books.  How I longed to join in and champion her novels!  The lady presenter loved her, the young man was fairly luke-warm but my lovely Peter White, the blind broadcaster was, s most disparaging.  Only to be expected, I suppose, because the books are, after all, women's books.  But what a lovely comforting read! No mention was made of the humour in the exchanges between the main characters, especially in "The Reluctant Widow"  and "The Grand Sophy".  Who cares if the plots are basically the same. This can be said of Jane Austin and many others.  These books are "A Good Read".
   

A Family Day

Yesterday was a very happy family occasion.  My son and daughter-in-law came from Folkestone where they are spending the long half term holiday.    The French schools have a fortnight off at this time.
Despite the proliferation of electronic computer games the boys (and grown-ups) spent a happy day playing Snakes and Ladders, Ludo, Dominoes, Rummy and other card games, playing the Ukulele and singing English nursery rhymes.  What conclusions do we draw from this?  That the art of amusing ourselves without the ubiquitous Telly is not yet lost!
The boys have had an exciting week.  They were invited to a Hallowe'en party by a friend of their big sister where they dresses up and had a sweetie hunt.  Then they went to a fireworks party and had lots of nice food.

Scene:   The playground of a school in France.  Two teachers are talking.  The first teacher says  "I have a little English boy in my class".  "So have I" says the second teacher.  "I think they should meet each other" says the first teacher and calls " Lloyd, come here. I want you to meet Hamilton.  He is English like you".  "I know" says Lloyd.  "He is my brother".

Power Cuts

I suppose what I wrote about the storm of 1987 was small beer compared with what has just happened in the U.S,A. Being without electricity is catastrophic.  Everything we use these days seems to depend on a regular supply of electricity.
Looking at a diary entry for November 1950 I see that we had a power cut and I was having a frantic hunt for matches and candles. Power cuts happened quite often and would last for two or three hours so I should have been prepared. We were living in a large house in London and I had just brought a load of  rain soaked washing in from the garden which I would have to dry by the fire. (No tumble drier in those days).  There was a shortage of coke for the kitchen boiler , a brute to get going anyway, so there was no heat in the kitchen and no hot water. I had a new gas cooker and we had just had a delivery of coal for the sitting room fire.  The coal was delivered by horse and cart.  There was a horse trough opposite our house where the horse stopped regularly for a drink of water.  One winter's day the water in the trough was frozen and the coalman came in my kitchen with an enormous bucket to get some water for his horse.
Even so long after the war ended there was still a shortage of many things.  It would appear that I was obsessed  with buying an extra blanket as I was expecting my sister-in-law and family to stay.  I had been to Brixton and Croydon but no blankets were to be had.  As it turned out it didn't matter as the boys got measles so they didn't come.  Life was very fraught in those days.  Now if you have the money ( or even if you don't) you can go to the shops and buy whatever you want.