Hmm, so this is what they call summer eh?

I have been away again but this time nowhere terribly exotic I’m afraid. I went just about 3 hours away from home (by car!) which coincidentally is just down the road from where A & T live (remember them?).

I was supposed to be there from Wednesday to the following Monday and had been looking forward to it for months. The event is in the middle of summer and every year so far has been baking hot. You compete, catch some rays and generally have a good time.

Well, I suppose I shouldn’t have been quite so optimistic given the weather than we have had lately but I am a real optimist (have a mentioned that before?) and so with cries of ‘don’t be silly’ to every weather forecaster and ‘it’ll be fine’ to every gainsayer I travelled up to the event. Now it has to be said that a healthy dose of pragmatism does creep into my optimism, so I did pack my waterproofs, but all the same I fully expected the weather to

1. be fine or
2. be awful somewhere else but not where I was!

Day 1 was fine, bright and sunny and I rolled up my sleeves and watched the pale people turning lobster coloured. I chilled and enjoyed and had ice cream and cake with A&T on an afternoon off. Just as I had predicted, the weather looked lovely!

Day 2 dawned wet and I mean wet. Rain was coming down like stair rods and drops were bouncing 3 feet off the pavement but, since (as I have already said), I am an optimist, I fully expected that by lunchtime (when I had to go out in it) that the rain would have stopped and the sun would have come out. In the event, I guess I was almost right, as the rain did (eventually) stop that afternoon. The only thing was, that it was not before the river (which ran right down the side of the field that we were in) had burst its banks. One minute I was sat out on the field in my wheelchair thinking ‘I’m sure there wasn’t any water on the running track a minute ago’, and the next the water table seemed to be rising up to meet me. In ten minutes, the water had reached me and I was trying to back-pedal furiously. Of course, that is not to say that a wheelchair has pedals you understand, but I was on the retreat.

Now I started to retreat by going forwards (of course I turned round to face the other way first, otherwise that statement would make no sense at all…) and some very helpful chap decided to help by giving me a gentle push. Well, you know that thing where you are trying to be genteel and polite and so you feel the need to stop and you say quietly ‘please stop’, then ‘please stop’ (slightly louder) and then BLOODY WELL STOP WILL YOU!?’ – No? Well, if not, I’m sure you have the picture, it was one of those moments exactly! You see the nice helpful chap seemed to be ploughing some kind of a furrow in the mud with my front wheels and was in danger of hitting bedrock and tipping me out. Now I don’t mind being tipped out of my wheelchair, the BMB has done it and so has hubby and so has even my physio, so I figure I’m fair game, but into the mud – no way, especially not with me with a white shirt on too! After that, it was a bit of very undignified dragging backwards for me to escape the rising tide.

Well, with all these shenanigans, the water wasn’t waiting and as fast as I was back-pedalling (see earlier note) the water was catching me. In the end, the entire field, including the running track surrounding it was completely under 4” of water and yes that is inches of water – deeper too in some places! It took just half an hour from ‘oh isn’t that water’ to ‘OMG abandon ship!’.

I’m beginning to doubt that this really is summer – I think its some kind of government conspiracy where they made us all sleep for 5 months and are now trying to gloss over the fact that they let a deadly hibernation sickness loose in the nation.