Tuesday, July 24, 2007
20/07/07 Flooding in Dorking
It kept raining and raining in Dorking on Friday! I took a peek out of the window of the office, and started to wonder if I should be building an ark..
Monday, July 16, 2007
Fire on the prairie! (well, Station Road West actually)
It turned out that the fire engines in Croydon were not the last we were to see yesterday. At about half past 10, we decided to grab a spot of supper at the Oxted Inn, little did we know that they stop serving at 10. What an outrage, lol. We were just walking down to the bank on Station Road West, past the clothes shop 'Personality', when James noticed smoke rising off one of the shoes in the window! They had placed the said item right on top of one of those large high wattage spotlights that always get left on after closing time. It had obviously been just too much for the shoe to handle, and it looked to us as though the thing was ready to catch properly alight. We were a little hesitant about phoning up 999 at first, as it wasn't as if it was a huge blaze or anything.. James kept saying.. "well, it's not actually an emergency", lol. But sure enough, in about 5 minutes, up turned two whole fire engines, and about 15 firemen! We wondered if they were going to have to bash the door down or something so get in, but it seems they have a special high-tech bit of kit for this very purpose! A pole. Through the letter box it went.. and there started a kind of fishing game. It look them about 20 minutes to hook the pole under the shoe, and knock it to safety. It was quite interesting to watch! One thing I did find surprising though, was that they didn't have an emergency contact number for the owner of the shop. I would have thought it might be a good idea for the emergency services to have access to that kind of information, especially if this kind of thing happens quite often! But as it was, they were looking around all of the neighbouring shop fronts for out of hours contact numbers -not ideal really!Ants and storms..
Sorry I haven't written here for a while, I have been pretty busy with one thing or another..
I couldn't quite let yesterday pass without comment though. It seems to me that the weather is getting very strange. Yesterday we decided to go over to Croydon to choose me my free phone upgrade from the O2 shop, and no sooner had we stepped out of East Croydon station, we were in the midst of a plague of what looked like flying ants, but a bit larger. They were everywhere! People were power walking down the street, waving their arms, and squinting in a vain attempt to keep these beasties out of their eyes and clothes.. people running into shops for cover.. I've actually never seen so many of the things, or so large. We darted into a shop as soon as we could, and already we were covered in the things, and had to brush them off our clothes.
This swarm literally filled the whole of George Street which runs from the station down into the town centre, and North End, the main shopping street. I'm not sure if it stretched any further, as we didn't venture that far, strangely.
Anyway, we finally made it to the O2 shop, and just as I had selected the phone I wanted.. the flash downpour started. Bear in mind that we had just left home wearing summer tshirts and sunglasses. It was a warm Summer's day. And then ~crack~, thunder right above us, and a simultaneous flash of lightening.. and again, sounding like it hit something just down the high street this time. Then the heavy rain came.. and the high street was suddenly deserted, save for the groups of people huddled at the shop entrances, looking out in dismay. Within about a minute the whole street was awash, and then, about as quickly, the storm was gone and the blue sky returned.. along with two fire engines. It seems that the lightening did in fact hit something down the high street, somewhere in between the Whitgift Centre and Centrale, but we couldn't make out what.
What I find wierd about these storms that we keep getting, is that the seem to come with no warning. It's just like.. wham! You're in the middle of a thunder storm, in the space of time it takes to walk from one shop to another. I don't know how they move in so quickly. I'd be interested to see a satellite image of one of these things..
As we walked back to the station, I wondered where all of the flying ants had gone.. and then I looked to the ground, and I saw. What a stupid time to take your nuptial swarming flight. They won't be doing that again!
I couldn't quite let yesterday pass without comment though. It seems to me that the weather is getting very strange. Yesterday we decided to go over to Croydon to choose me my free phone upgrade from the O2 shop, and no sooner had we stepped out of East Croydon station, we were in the midst of a plague of what looked like flying ants, but a bit larger. They were everywhere! People were power walking down the street, waving their arms, and squinting in a vain attempt to keep these beasties out of their eyes and clothes.. people running into shops for cover.. I've actually never seen so many of the things, or so large. We darted into a shop as soon as we could, and already we were covered in the things, and had to brush them off our clothes.
This swarm literally filled the whole of George Street which runs from the station down into the town centre, and North End, the main shopping street. I'm not sure if it stretched any further, as we didn't venture that far, strangely.
Anyway, we finally made it to the O2 shop, and just as I had selected the phone I wanted.. the flash downpour started. Bear in mind that we had just left home wearing summer tshirts and sunglasses. It was a warm Summer's day. And then ~crack~, thunder right above us, and a simultaneous flash of lightening.. and again, sounding like it hit something just down the high street this time. Then the heavy rain came.. and the high street was suddenly deserted, save for the groups of people huddled at the shop entrances, looking out in dismay. Within about a minute the whole street was awash, and then, about as quickly, the storm was gone and the blue sky returned.. along with two fire engines. It seems that the lightening did in fact hit something down the high street, somewhere in between the Whitgift Centre and Centrale, but we couldn't make out what.
What I find wierd about these storms that we keep getting, is that the seem to come with no warning. It's just like.. wham! You're in the middle of a thunder storm, in the space of time it takes to walk from one shop to another. I don't know how they move in so quickly. I'd be interested to see a satellite image of one of these things..
As we walked back to the station, I wondered where all of the flying ants had gone.. and then I looked to the ground, and I saw. What a stupid time to take your nuptial swarming flight. They won't be doing that again!
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