Sunday 3 February 2013

Stormy Adventures

For those wondering where we’ve been, Littletree and I were hit by Cyclone Oswald – well, not us personally, but the area we live in was heavily affected. It had seemed that the usual January storms weren’t coming this year, and me being me, I hadn’t seen the news, so I didn’t know it was coming.

The wind picked up and the rain came down, and before I knew it, the power went out, and the phone. Littletree and I spent the next couple of days huddled up in the house, while trees came down around us, with no power, and the cellular reception tower went down, we had no way out and no way to contact the world.

The roof leaked terribly, the downstairs flooded (again), the pergola blew away, more trees came down, the road turned into a river and half washed away. The village water supply got contaminated so we had to boil water, and I was kept busy siphoning water out of the downstairs flat, and putting furniture up on bricks.

But we spent our time, playing Dungeons and Dragons, reading science textbooks by candlelight, and making up Minecraft-themed parody lyrics to every song we could think of. We danced to no music, and made handicrafts, and ate tinned food and fried bread. We snuggled and giggled and enjoyed being without phones and electricity and internet.

This river was our driveway

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This river was our street

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This river was our back patio

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This river was the downstairs living room

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this river was the garage

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This river was the bathroom

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The knee-deep water I was siphoning out with a garden hose (and no, I don’t own a siphon pump)

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This was the pergola with most of a tree on top of it

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The back stairs which have ceased to exist

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And this is where there used to be a road, but a tree fell on it, taking out all the power lines and phone lines for a few days

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The fallen tree from above

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When the storm finally blew itself out and the workers finally came to clear it up,

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Littletree took great interest in watching from the balcony with her binoculars

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Slowly, slowly, they got it cleared

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And it became a street again

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And we’re all safe and sound in the end.

3 comments:

  1. Full on! We had a similar experience last year, but with extreme blizzards and cold. The roof fell off, live power cables everywhere, water pipes frozen and broken chimney so no main fire! Makes you feel alive though, doesn't it?!

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  2. Nice you could have a mini retreat but the mess looks terrible! Hope you get some help cleaning up!

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  3. thanks both. It's kinda crazy weather.
    not likely to get help cleaning up, but we're moving house this week

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Thanks for your lovely words, witty banter and entertaining discussion :)