Monday - Friday

 Sorry I didn't reply to all comments yesterday. I think the rain affected the wifi connection as everything went slow.

Typical! was my thought on Monday morning when I felt the en-suite radiator and found it stone cold, that was after I'd looked out of the bedroom window and seen the ice on the car windscreen. I pulled on some clothes, coat and hat and went to the garage to look at the boiler - yep - low pressure light was on and, Thank Heavens, that's the one boiler problem I've learned how to solve in my 2½ years here.

After I'd got warmed up and had breakfast it seemed like a good idea to do another thing I've had to learn  since Colin died - checking the car tyres and putting some air in. It's easy now I've got a hand-held battery powered compressor thing - it looks like a battery drill and the instructions, which I have to read every time I use it, are in plain English.

The cold weather didn't last and the rest of the week was milder with some damp mornings but I zoomed round the back grass one afternoon before the battery ran out again on the mower - it's not holding it's charge so long nowadays. Another job done this week was to give the inside of the greenhouse glass a good wash, I'm ready for next spring now except for the worst job of washing all the pots. I'll do that inside the greenhouse sometime using the water butt full of water that's in there all summer as a basic sort of heat-sink.

No exercise group again as the electrical work at the village hall had over run (No surprise there then!) So a trip out for a visit and for shopping and a walk up the road for a haircut and library van were my only outings.  

Friday was the day that we got the heavy rain that had been talked about all week and rain it certainly did.  This was what happened just  a few yards down the road on the corner.

The little ditch that usually has no water running through it was overwhelmed  by water running off the fields - the sewer pumping station is not far away on the right of this photo below - very worrying!

Water was coming up out of the drains

and 4 x 4's were going through gently

and it got worse a few hours after this photo. I was very glad I hadn't booked a swim as I wouldn't have got home and might not have even got to the pool anyway as there are several places on the way there that probably flooded. 

At midday I texted son to tell him that I'd heard that my village was more or less cut off for small cars and he'd probably have to use the works van to pick up Daughter-in- Law from our primary school here and the children from their primary/pre school in the next village. He rang back a while later to say schools had been closed  and said he'd had to try 2 different ways to get from his office to our village and been through rivers running down roads between our village and the children's school. There was a transit van floating in one place! and worse news was that they had no water out of the taps in their part of their village. I straight away filled up some jugs - just in case. This is all very unusual for Suffolk.

Very glad that my bungalow is several feet up above road level and a good thing that there were no burials being prepared on the burial ground over the road, the mini digger would have made a right ol' mess getting through the gate - coffins would have floated in any graves dug!

Places in Scotland had even more flooding than our little bit of Suffolk and I really feel for the people who've had to move out of their homes and will be going back to a dreadful mess.

 I'd thought about visiting another  National Trust property this weekend before their times change for winter but the heavy rain will have caused floods everywhere so maybe not.. I'll definitely be watching the second semi-final of the Rugby World Cup when England play South Africa. England have done so well to get to the last 4 as they were more or less written off after their poor performances in their pre-tournament friendlies. I've managed to watch nearly all the games but can England  beat South Africa ? that is the question.

 Hope you all have a good weekend.

I'll be back Monday with Octobers library book photo

Sue.