flood 2026 – Dan Q

Food divided by Distance

I was pretty ill yesterday. It’s probably a combination of post-flood stress and my shitty lungs’ ability to take a sore throat and turn it into something that leaves me lying in bed and groaning.

I spent most of the morning in and out of a fitful sleep, during which I dreamed up the most-bizarre application: a GPS tracker app that, after being told your destination and what you were eating, reported your journey progress to social media by describing where you were going and how much of your food was left¹.

I should be clear that in the dream, I wasn’t the one that invented this concept; in fact, I didn’t even understand it at first (maybe I still don’t!). In the dream I was at some kind of unconference event with a variety of “make art with the Web” types, and I missed a session by falling asleep². I woke (within the dream) right before the session ended and rushed in to see what was being presented, and only got the tail-end of the explanation of how a project – this project – worked, after which I felt rushed to try to understand it before somebody inevitably tried to talk to me about it.

But it could work, couldn’t it? If you’re one of those people who routinely tracks and shares their location (like Aaron Parecki, whose heatmapping inspired my own) or journeys (like Jeremy Keith does), it’s a way to add a bit of silliness to that sharing.

I’m probably not going to implement this. It is, in the end, the kind of stupidity that could (should?) only appear in the dreams of somebody who’s got a bad head cold.

But if you manage to take this idea and turn it into something… actually good?… let me know!

Or if you’ve just got a cool, “Web 2.0-ey” idea for the name of an app that tracks both your journey progress and your meal consumption, I’d love to hear that too.

Footnotes

¹ Under the assumption that its consumption would be evenly distributed throughout the journey. Because everybody does that, right? Counting the number of steps they make before taking another equal-sized bite. Right?

² Even in my dreams, I can dream of falling asleep. And, sometimes, of dreaming. A fever probably helps.

F-Day plus 38

It’s 38 days since our house was damaged in a flash flood, and today’s the first of our ‘BER’ assessment. BER stands for Beyond Economical Repair. It basically means that anything on the list is something that the insurance company intend to ‘write off’: to declare irreparable or not-worth repairing and scrap, replacing it with an equivalent new one.

So today, while I work, I’m watching a trio of men carry all of the soft furnishings, white goods, and rugs, plus any plywood/MDF-based furniture that got soaked into a pair of vans on the driveway, making notes where possible of the makes and models of things as they go.

My home is rapidly becoming more cavernous and echoey.

Dan Q found GC79ZK3 Wootton Word Wall

This checkin to GC79ZK3 Wootton Word Wall reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.

I’ve never come across the TV series nor this kind of puzzle before, and opted to solve it in an unconventional way. We’re living for a week in an AirBnB nearby – one in a long series of short term lets while we and our insurance company find us sonewhere longer-term, following flood damage to our house last month.

This morning, the younger geokid and I came out for a walk with the geopup. After a little difficulty getting a GPSr fix we eventuality found a good-looking host, and after a few laps we had the well-camouflaged container in our hands. A good sized, well maintained container and an interesting puzzle, even if the way we solved it might be considered by some to have been cheating!

SL (using my own pencil; the one in the cache is blunt and I forgot to bring my sharpener), TFTC.

F-Day plus 35

It’s F-Day plus 35, and I’m spending a few hours working in the habitable part of our flood-damaged house while I’m “between” two AirBnBs.

The dog, who doesn’t normally get to come upstairs, is sitting with me on the landing. Except she also wants to keep an eye on what’s happening downstairs.

The result? Her back legs are sitting and her front legs are standing as she peers blepfully down the stairs.

A Hundred Inconveniences

It’s F-Day plus 31 – a whole month (and a bit; thanks February) since our house filled with water and rendered us kinda-homeless.

We continue to live out of a series of AirBnB-like accommodations, flitting from place to place after a week or fortnight. I can’t overstate how much this feels like a hundred tiny inconveniences, piling up in front of me all at once and making it hard to see “past” them.

An attractive Cotswold-stone converted barn with a gravel driveway and a broad grassy lawn. — Our current two-week stint is spent at a place that’s perfectly delightul… but it’s not *home*.

They’re all small potatoes compared to the bigger issue of, y’know… our house being uninhabitable. But they’re still frustrating.

I’m talking about things like discovering your spare toothbrush heads are at the “wrong” house. Or having to take extra care to plan who’s going to use which car to go to the office because the kids and the dog need dropping off (because our lives were all optimised for our local walking and bus routes). It’s a level of cognitive load that, frankly, I could do without.

Dan and JTA sit with pints of beer in a cluttered brewery, at a table with large tomato cans repurposed as holders for chilli oil and pizza cutters. — I’m trying to look on the bright side. One particular highlight was JTA and I discovering the epic pizza restaurant inside the brewery that’s about four minutes walk from where we’re living, right now.

Meanwhile, any relief is slow to come. We’re still without a medium-term plan for somewhere to live, because even though the insurance company has pulled their finger out and agreed to pay for say six months of rental of a place, we’re struggling to find a suitable property whose landlord is open to such a short-term let.

When the house first flooded and friends told me that I’d be faced with many months of headaches, I figured this was hyperbole. Or that, somehow, with the epic wrangling and project management skills of Ruth, JTA and I combined, that we’d be able to accelerate the process somewhat. Little did I know that so many of the problems wouldn’t be issues of scale or complexity but of bureaucracy and other people’s timescales. Clearly, we’re in it for the long haul.

It feels silly that we’re still in the first quarter of this 2026 and already I’m looking forward to next year and the point where we can look back and laugh, saying “ah, remember 2026: the year of the flood?” Sigh.

Dan Q found GC4MJY0 R’n’R #9 – Thumper

This checkin to GC4MJY0 R’n’R #9 – Thumper reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.

The younger geokid and I had a plan, this morning, to drive out from our temporary (post-flood) accommodation in New Yatt, park at St. Peter’s in Wilcote, and then walk the dog around the area between Wilcote and Ramsden while we collect a few more caches from this excellent series.

Unfortunately our plans were scuppered early on when we discovered that a Scouts troop had completely occupied all possible parking spaces in Wilcote, and a platoon of children, supervised by some tired-looking adults, were beginning a walk around what looked likely to be the exact same routes we were planning.

So we came at it from the other angle. Driving around to Finstock, we parked near The Plough and came across the network of footpaths from the other end.

By the time we were at the corner of this field the kid and dog were enjoying running around in the Spring sunshine, and once we got to the GZ the cache itself was a quick and easy find… although the kid did take the time to stop and make a crude joke about the rabbit’s bum being corked!

Cold Giraffe

My mum painted a cold giraffe onto a postcard and sent it to me. It’s been added to my collection.

She sent it to my “send me a postcard” PO box (even though she’s got my actual address), which I’m guessing was an indication that it was being “sent” to me “as if” she were a stranger on the Internet.

Or possibly it’s just because I’m, y’know, living in a variety of different places with only intermittent trips back to my actual house, while my insurance company and their contractors do their work to dry out our walls and floors, assess the damage caused after my house flooded, 24 days ago.

Whatever the reason, it was an uplifting piece of mail to receive.

In other things-are-improving news, our insurance company (finally! – after lots of checks and paperwork at their end) accepted liability for paying for the repairs we’ll need and for our temporary accommodation (including the places we’ve already been living for the last few weeks).

Horse Gym

My current temporary home – and, necessarily, office – is directly next door to some kind of “horse gym”: a contraption a little like a huge revolving door to encourage one or more horses to exercise by walking around it:

Every now and then my peripheral vision registers that there’s a horse outside the window and, for the dozenth time, I look up from my work and glance around to barely catch it vanishing off on yet another lap.

Dan Q found GCAABQ1 North Leigh Loop #8

This checkin to GCAABQ1 North Leigh Loop #8 reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.

Since our house flooded a few weeks ago we’ve been living out of a series of short holiday lets, waiting for the floors to dry out and the insurance company to assess the damage, before we’ll hopefully be able to secure a slightly longer tenancy somewhere while repairs are done.

Right now we’re staying in New Yatt. I’ve cached a little around here before, but never this loop, so this morning the geopup and I came out for a walk and to begin this loop… at its end!

After some initial difficulty getting a GPS fix we eventually found a good looking hiding place. Despite this being the first find out this cache and the terrible recent weather, the cache and its log are in fine condition. SL, TFTC!

Note #28424

One last outing for the dog and I along the Cotswold lane we’ve been living on, before we move to different temporary accommodation tomorrow.

We’re hoping soon to no-longer have to move every week or two, but we’re not at that point yet.

Flood of cookies

In sympathy for our flood situation, my sister baked and posted us a big batch of her fantastic raisin & oatmeal cookies.

I’ve eaten like six of them already. Turns out I stress-eat. Who knew?

F-Day plus 19

Nineteen days after my house flooded, causing extensive damage on the ground floor, the insurance company has finally accepted the claim and is willing to pay for our temporary accommodation in the meantime (a few days in a hotel, a few days with friends although that’s not paid-for, four weeks in two different holiday lets), although we’re still waiting for their thumbs-up on a proposal for a ~6-month let of a house to live in while our floors are replaced and our kitchen rebuilt and whatnot.

Meanwhile, yesterday a surveyor came around and looked at all of our walls. Everything still feels like it’s taking a very long time. I appreciate that insurance companies are a maze of bureaucracy and procedure, but from “this side” of the table – living and working out of strange places, never really feeling “unpacked” but without it being a holiday – it’s all a bit of a drag!

Caution: No Swimming

Dan Q / Curious Cones, in Caution: No Swimming

Hurrah! I just made my first successful submission to Curious Cones, a weblog collecting photographs of traffic cones spotted in unusual places.

I spotted this cone while the younger child and I took a walk to the next-nearest village to our temporary accommodation, in order to find a geocache, tag some benches for OpenBenches, and have a cafe brunch.

Anyway: if you’re not following Curious Cones, it’s exactly as delightful as you might expect.

F-Day plus 12

It’s now twelve days since a flood struck my house, causing the ground floor to be submerged under a couple of feet of water and ultimately leading us to kick off an insurance claim process.

A home office with its floor stripped down to poured concrete and an industrial dehumidifier running. — My regular home office of the last six years sits stripped-down, with no flooring, skirting boards, or power (with the exception of the specialised circuit powering an industrial dehumidifier).

And man, a home insurance claim seems to be… slow. For instance, we originally couldn’t even get anybody out to visit us until F-day plus 10 (later improved to F-day plus 7). The insurance company can’t promise that they’ll confirm that they’ll “accept liability” (agree to start paying for anything) until possibly as late as F-day plus 17. Nobody will check for structural damage until F-day plus 19¹.

Oh, and the insurance company have advised us to look for something like a “12 month let with a 6 month break clause”, which is horrifying. We could be out of our home for up to a year.

Dan, a white man, stands with his arms raised outside a nicely-decorated converted barn. — Right now, though, we’re spending two weeks in this holiday let about half an hour’s drive from our house. It’s pretty nice, except that we have to commute over the ever-congested single-lane Burford Bridge to get the kids to and from school every day².

Some days it feels like being stuck in a nowhere-place… but simultaneously still having to make the regular everyday stuff keep ticking over. Visiting the house- currently stripped of anything damp and full of drying equipment – feels like stepping onto another planet… or like one of those dreams where you’re somewhere familiar except it’s wrong somehow.

But spending time away from it, “as if” on holiday except-not, is weird too: like we’re accepting the ambiguity; leaning-in to limbo. Especially while we’re waiting for the insurance company to do their initial things, it feels like life is both on hold, and not-allowed to be on hold.

A nervous-looking French Bulldog in a teal jumper looks up from under a desk. — The dog gets it. I had to take her to the house for a while on Monday³ and she spent the whole time leaning against my feet for reassurance.

And I worry that by the time they’re committed to paying for us to stay somewhere else for at least half a year, they lose any incentive they might have to contract for speed. There’s no hurry any more. We’re expected to just press pause on our home, but carry on with our lives regardless, pretending that everything’s normal.

So yeah, it’s a weird time.

Footnotes

¹ I’m totally committed to this way of counting the progress, which I started on F-day plus 3. I get the feeling like it might be a worthwhile way of keeping track of how long all of this takes.

² Normally, the younger and older child are able to get to school on foot or via a bus that stops virtually outside our house, each day, so an hour-plus round-trip to their schools and back up to twice a day is a bit of a drag! We’re managing to make it work with a little creativity, but I wouldn’t want to make it a long-term plan!

³ And do some work from there, amidst the jet engine-like noise of the dehumidifiers!

Dog tired

Today was a long day. Between commuting (the kids to school from our distant flood-evacuation accommodation), work, childcare, insurance wrangling etc., I was pretty tired when I got back “home”. So I came in and lay on the floor.

At which point the dog decided I was a pillow.