Rain's been pretty bad here too, though no floods like the ones in
England.  The BBC says it's already well past the 1947 record.

The pictures and video on the BBC website make Gloucestershire look
like New Orleans after Katrina.

It just gets bloody depressing with week after week of solid rain.
The house is full of washing hanging on racks since nothing will
dry outside, and there are slugs and snails climbing up the doors
and windows and through the catflap.  Luckily we've had a couple of
days of mostly sunshine just lately.

The furries are just lazing about and the bitties (three weeks old)
have just started getting all four legs to work in the same direction.
They come out of their nest to look around at about 2am.

==============  j-c  ======  @  ======  purr . demon . co . uk  ==============
Jack Campin:  11 Third St, Newtongrange EH22 4PU, Scotland | tel 0131 660 4760
<http://www.purr.demon.co.uk/jack/>   for CD-ROMs and free | fax 0870 0554 975
stuff: Scottish music, food intolerance, & Mac logic fonts | mob 07800 739 557

Luckily for me, the floods are in a different part of the UK, so we're fine.
The stream at the end of the garden has burst its banks once this summer
(never happened before in living memory according to the locals. Winter -
yes, summer - no) but again, the powers that be smiled on us and we stayed
dry. To start off with, the main flooding was flash floods due to intense
rainfall overwhelming the drains. Now, all that water is in the river
systems, the rivers have burst their banks and spread out wide and deep
across old flood plains. One of the problems is the lack of investment in
flood defences & watercourse maintenance to the required standards, that and
the tarmacing over of what was open fields so the water can't be absorbed
into the ground - it just runs straight off, causing major problems.

"MaryL" wrote in message

Thanks for the thoughts. Here in Cornwall we've suffered no flooding, just
dreary wet weather like we do every winter only now it's a bit warmer. The
Masters are unhappy at reduced opportunities to be outside basking and the
doggie's regularly damp but apart from that no problems.

Purrs for the assorted deluges to stop soon & bring relief to upcountry.

Gordon & the FF

I was wondering how everyone was too. It looks horrible.

Purrs or our British friends.

Flippy.

Thanks for thinking of us, Mary. All fine here (Surrey) although the
bottom of our road flooded last Friday despite the huge new drains that
were put in a few years ago - no rivers here, it was all surface water
rushing down. Fortunately we live at the top of a hill so we are OK, but
elsewhere in the country it's dire with no drinking water for hundreds
of thousands of people and billions of pounds of damage from Yorkshire
to Gloucestershire. Wish this bloody rain would STOP!!! I'm with Jack on
the slugs and snails, they get everywhere!! The cats keep bringing them
in on their fur and paws :-(

Deb.

On 23 Jul, 22:53, "MaryL" <stanco...@yahoo.comTAKE-OUT-THE-LITTER>
wrote:

Many thanks for those rumble purrs which are very much appreciated.
Last night we had to go out & rescue the cats out of their runs,
because the back garden was almost a strong stream!!. Thankfully we
live on the only hill for many miles around. we live in East Anglia,
which is almost totally reclaimed land from the sea,(under sea level
too!!) & most of the village is actually under sea level, so any rain
we get, added to our clay soil, ends up either pooling , or floods the
plain fens. any over flow from the storm drains is sent into our dyke
systems, but even those are now over flowing too.

The sewage has entered the clean water dams, so we are having to
collect water from the army who were handing out crates of water to
all families, but since then,, they have set up a tank system where we
can go and collect water as we need it. We brought the cats indoors
from the run @ around 7 pm when it became clear that their safety
looked threatened. With 7 adults & 4 kittens, we chose to bring them
indoors, where they were safe & just as well that we did. We had only
just got them indoors, when we realised that everything that wasn't
bolted down in the garden, was starting to float down hill towards our
fence, which now has a gaping great hole in it, where the water was
trying to break through; it certainly broke through in the end, that
is for sure!!

All of the cats seem to be making the most life indoors, & seem
perfectly happy, but it is not easy with all of the kids on summer
holiday's, & all of those doors that need to be closed before one of
the cats escape!! A bit of a nightmare really, but could be far, far
worse. we have our home still, our children are safe & so are our cats
too.

I know that it is going to take some time for the effects of the rain
to dissipate, & I worry about the food in the shops because people
around here have been panic buying water, fresh vegetable and suchlike
too. East Anglia is the kitchen garden of the country (UK), & I also
fear that many farmers have lost their crops this year to the rain,
the dykes overflowing all over thier fields, so this is going to have
a long term effect.
Lets not worry over what can't be undone, but look to the future &
what we can do to make our homes defend-able & help those who are
worse off than us...
ALL Purrs are appreciated very much- & thank you for thinking of us
too,
Sheelagh

I am lucky that I live in an area where no houses have been flooded,
although many fields are under water and a few roads are impassable.
Further south in Gloucestershire the situation is very serious. 250,000 are
without electricity and the water pumping station has failed so they have no
water to add to the misery of having their homes ruined.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/gloucestershire/floods/

It's very worrying - it has hardly stopped raining here for 3 months.  Crops
are ruined.  I hear potatoes in particular will be in short supply later on.
Almost anything that grows in the earth too, I suppose.
It has rained today, but not all day - and it will rain again tomorrow.  I
heard on the radio that we will not have any summer this year, that this is
forecasted to continue until autumn, which is when it gets wet anyway :-(

Tweed