We lost power for several days, and resorted to eating in the greenhouse, with comestibles cooked on a makeshift barbeque! Scrobs was pleased to have his picture taken doing this, as cooking has never been his strong point, and the picture top right shows a youthful bloke in his favourite jersey...
Here's my car, which suffered more than somewhat from a falling wall opposite the old 'Turrets'.
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Luckily it was a hire car, as I'd only just started a new job in Tonbridge, but it all took a bit of sorting out. My favourite Deluxe A-Z was soaked, but I didn't have the heart to chuck it away, so it's still intact, and used regularly! The chap parked behind me came off far worse, as his Mini was as flat as a pancake, but Mrs Scroblene's Mini, parked further down the lane was untouched!
we certainly lost a lot of trees in '87
ReplyDeletebut in several ways a more dramatic event was the storm of (IIRC) Jan '89
all bridges across the Thames were closed, & all buses stopped: so from work I crossed the river on the tube and walked home, laboriously, from Brixton to Croydon
the sights and dangers along the way were astonishing: for example, having to duck into a doorway to avoid a bus shelter that was cart-wheeling down the street
in Streatham, the part of the end-wall (of a terrace of 5-storey shops-with-flats-above) that protrudes vertically above the roof-pitch, with chimneys in it, had caught a blast of wind running along the roof and brought the entire end-wall down into the side street
a bit of an adventure
and back at home, our substantial garden fence that had comfortably survived the '87 storm was flat on the ground; likewise that of my grandma
I think Kev also has some recollections of the '89 epic, from his coppering days
Crikey Scrobs,
ReplyDeleteJolly lucky that you or Mrs S. were not in your vehicles at the time.
I rather like the idea of greenhouse dining...what fun !
love Di xx
I've often wondered what you were doing in that pic - never imagined you were cooking.
ReplyDeleteIn this neck of the woods, we regularly get storms not dissimilar to the one you describe. I missed that one as I was lost in deepest darkest Africa at the time.
ReplyDeleteOnly yesterday we had a lengthy storm with rain so heavy it was impossible to see across the road - 30 feet away! The volume of water completely overwhelmed the road storm drains which empty into the local river and so the run off from our internal drains could not get out into the main flow and started backing into the garden. We had reached 3 inches on the patio when the storm decided to stop raining here and move on elsewhere. Not funny!
I have beautiful clean patches on the car tyres now where the water rose to rim level. Another hour of that and we would have been under several inches of wet stuff throughout the house! ... and the real monsoon season has not yet even started!
I was working in Canterbury that time Nick, and the senior partner was worried about his building being blown apart.
ReplyDeleteAs we were on our third pint, it wasn't difficult to tell him that the place had been around since 1750, and would have survived much worse weather, at which he relaxed and we went on for the gallon...
We didn't even know it had happened, Trubes, until a neighbour popped round and said "Have you seen your car"?
ReplyDeleteI was more worried about the greenhouse!
It wasn't really cooking, Mr H, more like stirring something with tincture out of shot...
ReplyDeleteBlimey, Reevers, now that would scare me more than somewhat!
ReplyDeleteMrs Scroblene regularly regales me with stories of the six o'clock downpours from way out East, but I didn't know it got that bad...