What an afternoon....we suddenly acquired our own private lake outside the front door!

So there I was this afternoon, photographing some stock in readiness to list to the website, now that Broadband was working again and website back to normal...see earlier post I put up this morning. Then all of a sudden it went very dark outside, there were flashes of lightening and huge rumbles of thunder and the heavens opened like I have never ever seen before. It was almost biblical like! Within minutes all the drains outside were blocked and water started to pour into everyone's driveways at our end of the road, several of us have driveways sloping down to our front doors! Those of us who were at home, began nervously looking out of our front doors, completely bewildered.

 

These photos were taken only after a few minutes...the rain just got heavier and heavier after this and I didn't have chance to take anymore photos as I was too busy freaking out, as the water at its worst was just about 1/2" underneath all our breeze blocks at the front and encroaching over our doorstep. We have lived here in Thame for nearly 30 years and we have never experienced anything like this before...ever. Several of us at our end of the road were now extremely worried that our houses were going to be flooded, all we could hear was siren after siren....which added to the weirdness of it all. Apparently there were bigger and more dramatic things going on elsewhere in Thame at that very moment.

A quick phone call to my mate Robin (of our workshop fame) to see how she was faring at her end of Thame, proved that she was ok but I was in panicking mode by now. She came up with a superb idea of rolling up a rug or old carpet or something similar and shoving them up against the front door to block water that way or anywhere else where there were leaks to protect property from the inside.  That was going to be my first line of defence if necessary...we just don't have any sandbags! Mr KT and I were mentally going through how and where to turn electrics and gas off at mains if necessary.

Then suddenly the clouds parted and the rain stopped just like that!  

For a while, all we could hear were the continuing sirens echoing around Thame. It was all so freaky and weird.  Some water had penetrated over the top of our breeze blocks but thankfully not enough for us to panic further. Plus we had to endure sewage bubbling out of all the manhole covers and drains in our back gardens but luckily that all subsided after a couple of hours to just a trickle. And although there is a horrible damp and unpleasant aroma around, am thankful that our house was saved from actual flooding on this occasion. My heart goes out to anyone who was not so lucky.

Celia

PS. Crazy or what but when suddenly faced with a priority of what to move if water came into the house, after my computer (has all my business stuff on)...my lovely Hobbies 186 dolls house and contents were second on the list!!! Ha ha...much to Mr KT's annoyance. 

PPS. As you may have guessed, I had to abandon all hope of doing any listing today!