Rain, floods and no way home.....

If ever I wanted to own an amphibian vehicle, Friday 20 July 2007 would have been the day. On my way to work it started raining, first a drizzle then the heavens opened. I must admit I have never seen rain come down as hard as it did on Friday. And it seemed that there was no end in sight. I finished work at around 12:30 hoping to make it back home in time to go and see Waldo and Kayla in their end of term Assembly. I was also a bit concerned that our garage would be flooding.

What should have taken me 20 minutes to get home turned out to be a long 2.5 hours. It seemed as if every road leading into our suburb had been flooded. I would turn a corner just to be met with another flooded road. Eventually I spoke to a soldier doing traffic duty outside the Arborfield Garrison and he suggested that I take a detour through Eversley to get home.

It seemed as if everyone took this option as there were extremely long queues on the roads. I wasn't surprised at all when I got to Eversley to find that the road there too had been flooded, but at this stage I was so fed up I thought, what the hell...... I held my breath and drove through the water, which now looked more like a lake.

Good old Mazda just kept going and got me through just as I hoped it would. This meant that I was now well on my way home.

I missed the assembly but at least I was able to get home without being to water logged.

The reports said we received the equivalent of a month's rain in one day. A lot of areas were really badly hit by flooding and a lot of people had to be evacuated. As it is still raining they have issued another flood warning for this evening.... we will have to wait and see what happens ....

Seeing Rod Stewart LIVE at Twickenham....

Wanda and I went to see Rod Stewart on Saturday the 30th June at Twickenham stadium. We had booked the tickets some time ago and finally the time had come to make the trip to the stadium. As we weren't up to the traffic and finding parking we decided to take the train. This decision we would later regret, but more about that later on.

As we got to Twickenham station it poured down with rain and we made our way through the streets, with Wanda under her brolly and me cruising along with my jacket's hoodie on.

Turning one of the corners we both could smell a very familiar aroma in the air..... it was boerewors..!!!!! A group of South Africans had put up a stall in someones front yard, and they were selling delicious boerewors rolls and playing South African music. Made us think back to the days in SA.

After our stomachs had been tamed, we headed into the stadium and we were met by the huge queue of people trying to get into Twickenham, but because of the bags being searched and the few bag searching stations this seemed to take forever. Once inside we found our seats and boy were we glad that we were sitting under the roof and not in the rain. There were a lot of people who had bought tickets and probably paid more than we did, to have the luxury of sitting closer to the stage. Only thing was that they were the ones getting soaked.

We had a beer and a vodka&coke (no guessing as to who the vodka was for as they don't sell Klippies here) and enjoyed the Pretenders as they were the supporting act for Rod.

And then he started the show and boy what a show it was. He must be one of the best performers I have ever seen on stage. And the atmosphere was electrifying, with the crowd singing their hearts out with him. What an amazing show.

At one point we drove him to his knees with our singing and all he could say ..... "You guys are f&*ing great......".

After the show we put our rain coats back on and made our way out of the stadium, just to be greeted by thousands and thousands of people all making their way to the Twickenham station. About a block away from the station the split the crowds into two groups, one going to London and the other making their way to Reading..... as luck would have it there must have been 10 trains going into London for every 1 going to Reading. We were herded like cattle towards the station entrance and then stopped from entering as no train was available. We were standing so close together that Wanda couldn't even get her backpack off. After about 2.5 hours we were let into the station, just to find that they were still not sure if were going to have a train to get home.

Boy was it frustrating.... on the platform they had one guy telling us to move down the platform and another telling us to stay behind the yellow, which if you are trying to move down the platform is not entirely possible.

Eventually a train stopped 2 platforms down from where we were and someone shouted that it was the train to Reading. The "Reading train" sprint was born .... we had to run over the bridge to the other platforms and made it just in time. We were on the train and on our way home.....

All in all a good evening out - stunning show - really crap train service!!!