High water

Back in November the Thames got very high and I took some photos, intending to blog about it and never got round to it. This is the path in the local park leading down to the Thames path. The benches and rubbish bins were just about visible (it had been a bit higher than this).

It rained a lot whilst we were away. Up north (well midlands) there were a lot of rivers that had turned into lakes. North of Bedford the Great Ouse had oozed spectacularly for miles on either side of the road. On the Notts/Lincs border the Trent was so wide you couldn't see the other side. We had a day trip to Lincoln on Boxing Day and must have been one of the last cars over Dunham Bridge on the A57 before the road was closed. Our side of the road was clear at that point, but the other side was under water. There's a picture of it on the BBC website totally under water.

And this is what we came back to when we got back home after Christmas away. I couldn't even get close to the no BBQs sign this time.

And the park seems to have turned into a lake.

I don't think this is what was intended by "overflow car park".

Further up the river, this is Staines bridge, and what was the Thames path running outside a pub with seats for people to admire the river view.

And the Thames path a bit further up again. Yes, the river is usually to the right of the trees and lamp posts.

Fortunately most of these places aren't too near anyone's house, although the river's showing no signs of going down yet, and it's been raining all of today. Our house is well away from it.

Moving places and swine flu

Eeek, it's nearly a month since I last posted! How did that happen? Well, once again, exciting things are happening. I will be leaving Slough far far behind on Thursday this week, to move to Staines with The Other Half. I'll be very happy to leave Slough behind (there is currently a pile of dog poo sitting outside the entrance to my block of flats, plus a lovely smell of excrement, and I found a used syringe lying around last week) and I'm extremely excited about moving to Staines.

Several people wanted to know more about my OH, so I thought I'd post a couple of pictures:

This is him washing the floor at our new house (we got the keys last week!):

And this is him cleaning Oxo:

Spoilt? Me?! See, isn't he lovely?! And he has seen the size of my stash and is prepared to move in with it... Although he has a LOT more books than me, but I'm much more interested in his books than he is in my yarn!

We've been out and about as well as househunting. Having fun reading the silly messages in Puccino's in High Wycombe:

Admiring the sheep at Deen City Farm in London, after we'd visited Morden Hall Park and walked along the River Wandle.

Oh, and avoiding having swine flu. There was an outbreak very very close to me so I ended up having to take Tamiflu - not nice, only 3 more doses to take. Horrible stuff. Fortunately neither of us caught it, although I suspect having swine flu is better than taking Tamiflu.

Knitting update soonish (I will be without broadband for a while after the move) as I still haven't blogged about the GetKnitted workshop! I'll leave you with a picture of the Thames at Staines: