>>>Terry, is any of the flooding affecting your area? I understand it's starting to subside, but I just thought I'd check up on you.
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>>No, ALan, thanks for the concern. As it happens I live on one of the 7 hills of our city, and a huge engineering project a few years ago constructed a huge storm drain, big enough to fit a double-decker bus in, along the seafront. However, last Friday I dropped the kids off by car at school, in a deluge (normally I walk them but it was late and wet). After I drove off it turned out that the school was closed for the day due to water leaking through ceilings and running down walls with power points, floors and carpets being sodden and flooded, etc.
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>>That day, btw, the rain was so hard though that even the drains on the hill couldn't cope and water was filling the road, mounting the kerb, and approaching my door step, over my basement area bridge! Torrents ran down the main road down the hill and crashed against trees, splitting two ways - to the road and up the sidewalk.
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>>My geraniums aren't liking this!
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>I was stuck on the M4 for some time due to a landslide and flooding. I feel sorry for the people who are going to have no mains water for a couple of weeks.

This all reminds me of when we went trekking in the mountains of N. Thailand. There'd been heavy rains annd the rivers were in spate. Houses we saw washed along the river, roads washed away and Chang Mai in flood. We'd been due to raft the last easy leg back but instead had to climb a mountain and go round.