We camped!
It rained!
We conquered!

Meanwhile, back in Gloucester, it has flooded, there have been powercuts, and nobody will have any water at all for a fortnight, and there are fights breaking out over the inadequate supply of drinking water even in spite of police and army presence, and still people pollute and waste what little we have. Oh my!

Pictures, audio, video, news: http://www.bbc.co.uk/gloucestershire/floods/

Eastern Avenue, Floods

Nursery is closed. The office is open, and is running on the strength of 12 outdoor portaloos for a building that normally operates about 100 flushing toilets. Woo-hoo!

I felt during the last few days – urgently seeking news as to whether I had a habitable home to return to, and what was going on, and what about nursery and work, and cherishing every last minute of battery time on my phone, arranging refuge with a friend who has water (hooray!) – it felt as though I was getting a taste of something. An insight, however brief and trivial, into the perspective of a refugee from disaster. The same sense of being a refugee as I drove home, still unsure whether my house would be habitable and knowing only that I was very unlikely to have any running water.

We are at home now, but only briefly. I brought some water back with me, and we have plenty of rainwater collected, and a bowser not too far away, and a stream over the road which we can bucket into the cisterns for flushing toilets. Still, no bath and no washing machine. And we are grubby.

So we are going to stay with the aforementioned friend for a couple of days, just so we can get the washing done and have a hot bath. Thereafter we will take things as they come.

We are going camping again next week. – And hoping that the water will be back on once we get back… Eek!

In short: Consider any blogging over the next 10 days or so as a bonus.