Monday 21 January 2008

A bridge too far

Lots of excitement this morning as the rivers that run through our little town threatened to overflow their banks. Much squealing in the coffee shop as we watched the water rise outside, followed by a race to the river to see it in close-up.

When we arrived we found policemen guarding the bridge, which was being washed by three foot high waves and had been declared unsafe. There were flashing lights and machinery on the other side, where in a an unflood-related incident a big blue lorry had managed to reverse itself into the river.



The local press were there of course interviewing all the key players, well me and my coffee mates actually.

"How has the flooding affected you today?"
"Well I was rather hoping to get to the library but the bridge has been closed off."
"Can I quote you on that?"

It was only afterwards that I had a chilling premonition of this week's front page: an apocalyptic photo of cars, beloved possessions and bedraggled kittens being washed downstream and the caption: "Local resident Sarah Dunnakey is cross that she couldn't get to the library."

And knowing my luck they'll spell my name right this time.

On a more literary note, I am enjoying dipping into The Assassins Cloak: an anthology of the world's greatest diarists. It was a present from my brother a couple of Christmas's ago and I've just got round to discovering how fab it is. For each day there are four or five brief entries from the diaries of all sorts of people - Pepys (of course), Andy Warhol, Kafka, Che Guevara, Adrian Mole (yes I know he's not real) and Mary Shelley, to name a few. Its fascinating stuff. Thanks bruv.

Also verdict is in from My Man on chapters 1 and 2 of omg - it's funny, makes complete sense and left him wanting more (a bit like me then!)

What a sweetheart, hem-hem I mean completely objective editor person. He also said there were too many names at one point, but "that was typical of a woman's book and men aren't interested in that sort of thing." I re-read, he was right (about the too many names), so I cut some of them out (some of them even started with the same letter - curses!), just in case women aren't interested in that sort of thing either.

2 comments:

Karen said...

Sounds like an exciting Monday! The end of our road flooded, but not in a newsworthy fashion...just made the car even filthier :) Glad to see it's finally stopped raining today.

The Assassins Cloak sounds great - I might have to look out for that one.

HelenMWalters said...

Oh my goodness, what a flurry of activity! And what was that lorry driver trying to do?!