Post Dennis ... and other stuff!

A friend of mine who lives in a house at the top of a hill not too far from here, a friend of a rather poetical bent, said that all night her house was out at sea as Storm Dennis raged around it. We are lower down just had a prodigious amount of rain. Consequently the river is very full.

As is the road into the industrial estate behind our houses.

Going through the village earlier, I noticed that the fish and chip shop, with its door at the foot of some steps, has sandbags at both the door to the chippy itself and to the family’s dwelling. Last weekend in our absence the road in that part of the village was underwater and so I suspect was their property.

We personally seem to have got off lightly.

Valentine’s day has come and gone quietly as it usually does around here. On social media it has been a different matter. Lots of young people have been sending Valentine’s greeting to all their friends and family. How odd! Someone needs to reinstitute the idea of sending an anonymous valentine to someone you fancy rather than to someone who already knows how you feel.

The artist Banksy did a lovely Valentine’s message to a whole community down in Bristol. The people whose house it is on had plans to cover it in glass to preserve it. They did not work fast enough. Some unpleasant person has already vandalised it.

In South America they have discovered the fossilised shell of a giant turtle with the wonderful name “stupendemys geographicus”. He’s not the only creature from the depths of time to have a wonderful name. “Stupendemys – meaning “stupendous turtle” – inhabited a colossal wetlands system spanning what is now Colombia, Venezuela, Brazil and Peru before the Amazon and Orinoco rivers were formed. Its large size may have been crucial in defending against formidable predators. It shared the environment with giant crocodilians including the 36ft-long (11-meter-long) caiman Purussaurus and the 33ft-long (10-meter-long) gavial relative Gryposuchus. One of the Stupendemys fossils was found with a two-inch-long (5cm) crocodile tooth embedded in it.”

There you go!

And finally, here’s a story about a golden telephone. Imagine having golden telephones in all the bedrooms of your house. Imagine using that building for another purpose and still retaining the golden telephones. Imagine the golden telephones being thrown away, simply thrown away at some time in the past. It beggars belief! Even if they were just gold plated! Fortunately someone spotted one in a skip and saved it.

 Scavenging rules! OK!