A bit of environmental ranting. And rats.

 Here’s some advice about flood-proofing your home that I came across in an article this morning: 

“Get rid of your paving – and get your neighbours to as well

Paved surfaces all over towns and cities mean water has nowhere to go. This exacerbates flooding. If people have grass lawns rather than paving, some water can sink into the soil, reducing volumes. More and more of our towns and cities are becoming paved with impermeable surfaces, which puts everyone at risk of flooding.”

Well, I’ve been saying that for years as we’ve walked around here and seen more and more front gardens paved over to make a parking space. The trouble is that so many families these days have more than one car, sometimes at least three. I think our immediate neighbours have 4 vehicles: a works van, a pickup (I think that’s what it is, one of those vehicles that look like a large car with a sort of short flat-bed at the back) and a couple of more ordinary cars. Good grief! We don’t even have one these days!

And then there’s the fact that many of the houses around here were built as accommodation for textile mill workers, before it was expected that everyone would have a vehicle to park. So almost everyone is trying to create a parking space. Add to that the fact that a lot of new housing in recent years has been built on what were formerly flood plains. As a rule the houses are close together with little actual garden and what once have been a small front garden is automatically paved as a drive for at least one car. 

All of this leads to the situation presented in this article about the difficulty, the impossibility in some cases, of getting insurance for houses that have been flooded. There is talk of towns having to be abandoned! Where can the people from those towns go, people whose homes are their major asset and which they will be unable to sell? 

Of course, climate change doesn’t help the situation.

We consider ourselves fortunate that although we don’t live on a hill our house is high enough situated to avoid real risk of flooding. 

Like so many modern problems, perhaps the only real solution would be to go back in time and do things differently.  

Since I seem to be on a bit of an environmental rant, here’s a link to an article about those pesky microplastics being taken into “wilderness” area on hiking shoes and lightweight outdoor gear. My first pair of hiking boots, dating back to the 1970s were made of sturdy leather with a good stout sole, probably solid rubber. They weighed a ton! Even in my relatively small show size! But they did keep my feet warm and dry. They were replaced long ago, more than once, by increasingly more lightweight footwear. The same goes for waterproof clothing; my waterproof hiking jacket folds down into a small bag for ease of carrying on those days when you need a just-in-case rain jacket with you. And please don’t get me started on tents! I think back to the heavy canvas tents my Girl Guide troupe camped in back in the 1960s in the rainy Lake District and now look at the  pop-up tents festival-goers take with them and sometimes abandon when they leave.

That’s enough of that! To finish off, here’s a photo of a rat on the Cardiff City Stadium.

“Rain stops play” is something we associate with tennis or cricket. Now “Rat stops play” is the headline from the Wales v Belgium World Cup qualifying match last night. The Belgian goal keeper tried unsuccessfully to catch it. Wales substitute Brennan Johnson chased it off, it dodged a ball boy and disappeared from sight. The stadium manager commented: “They say you are never too far from a rat, especially in cities, and this one managed to get in. People have seen a rat on the pitch as quite funny, but it does have serious undertones. If I was the ball boy or Brennan Johnson I would have run a mile.”

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!