Homesick Blues

Six months ago today, I was awakened by the distant ringing of my mobile phone. Not too uncommon, I often left it downstairs, and I often slept late on weekends. It didn't feel that late, but at the time I was too sleepy to think anything of it. I dragged myself out of bed and headed downstairs quickly for the usual frantic attempt to find the phone before it stopped ringing.

It was only when I stepped off the final stair that my brain started to process the environment and tell me something slightly different was happening. My brain seemed to work in slow motion for the next second or two, it started with that strange sensation coming from my foot- what is that? Is it wet? How could that be? Why is it so dark and quiet? I think you need to wake up and panic... shout up to Bea, tell her something is happening... look out of the window... I'm pretty sure there wasn't a river there before.

I was up to speed. I was standing in water because our house was flooding, the river that used to be the street out front looked much deeper than the couple of inches I felt below my feet, and that could only be bad news. My wife, Bea, was standing on the stairs, probably going through a similar thought process as I just had. I don't know how long this whole process had taken, I clearly remember it happening in stages like that, but it must have been less than a few seconds because my phone was still ringing and hadn't transfered to voicemail.

We were on auto-pilot now, I went straight to my PC, which I knew was sitting on the floor, and which I knew had a very low hard disk placement (you didn't think of that one, did you Dell!). I noted as I stepped on floating rugs & carpets that the water level was already higher than I had initially thought. I just quickly grabbed the PC, yanking out any cables, watching the water pour out of the tower unit as I carried it, ran back to front room and put it on the highest stair I could reach. Bea had done the same thing, grabbing papers, wallets, passports. I made a list in my head, figuring I could get the things under the coffee table, then maybe the things on top, then the things higher up like the TV.

We made a couple of trips back and forth, mostly carrying paperwork, and anything else we had thought to pick up. I was already wading in water well above the knee, the coffee table had gone and I realised there was little hope of rescuing anything now. My legs were already hurting from the cold water so I took a moment to dry them, told Bea to stop going in the water, and tried putting on a pair of dry trousers... I don't really know what I expected that to acheive, they just slowed me down, and the water was still rising. We looked at each other and at the small pile of belongings we had managed to save, not really knowing what to do next. I think we just quietly took them upstairs to safety. Bea took a couple of photos, which I've already uploaded for earlier posts:-

Lessons learned
How deep was it

Bea had found and answered the phone that woke us, it was a message from my mum telling me our house was flooded. My brother lives two doors away on the same street, and he had called home when the sound of water bubbling under his front door woke him up- he had slept on the sofa, for as yet undisclosed reasons! The land lines were all dead, and if we hadn't woken up and answered my mobile phone then, it was probably only 15-30 minutes away from drowning. If not for that phone call we could have got up a couple of hours later and looked down the stairs to see 6 foot of thick, muddy water. We would have had no way of contacting anyone, and we wouldn't have been able to save a single thing. I feel very lucky everytime I think of that.

That was six months ago. As I write this, our house is still not dry, the drying company removed their equipment too soon and the insurance company are yet to agree on a contractor to carry out the eventual renovations. I've already written a little about our experience with the insurance company here. Bear in mind that my brother is expected to move back into his house over the next month, and that he has the same insurance company and loss-adjuster. Our reward for relaxing and not trying to hustle anyone looks likely to be a massive premium hike and an enormous flood damage excess on our imminent insurance renewal. Neither of these conditions was applied when my brother renewed his policy a couple of months ago. The last time I phoned home, my mum gave me more great news, that plans are being circulated in our home town to regenerate the city and help it recover from the flood by forcing us to sell our house and demolishing the whole area. Thanks guys, it's really going to help us recover from this experience if after waiting almost a year to get on with our lives and get back in our house, you decide to kick us out and knock it down. Fortunately, I don't really believe that will happen, so I'm just pushing it to the back of my mind and hoping for the best.

I haven't posted any pictures for a while, so here's a look at how our front room looks right now (the picture was taken back in May while we were still in England, but I've been reliably informed that nothing has changed there since):-


So, as the title of the post implies, I'm homesick. I don't really miss being in England, or in my home town, and I'm having a great time here in LA, but I really miss our home. I had hoped that when our time here in the US was over, we'd be going back to oversee the last few weeks of the renovations, but it looks like we'll just be going back to a few more months with my parents. The way things look right now we'll feel lucky if we're home by the end of the year.