Tag: flood 2026
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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. -
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 …
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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.
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French Bulldog stands patiently in the centre of a potholed rural single track lane.
We're hoping soon to no-longer have to move every week or two, but we're not at that point yet.
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In sympathy for our flood situation, my sister baked and posted us a big batch of her fantastic raisin & oatmeal cookies.
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Dan, a white man with a goatee beard and blue hair, sits next to a large box of cookies, about to eat one.
I've eaten like six of them already. Turns out I stress-eat. Who knew?
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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
Hurrah! I just made my first successful submission to Curious Cones, a weblog collecting photographs of traffic cones spotted in unusual places.
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F-Day plus 12
It's been only twelve days since our house flooded (it feels like a lot longer!), and progress is slow on getting damage assessments and medium-term accommodation planning sorted.
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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. -
Fake Herons
This morning, I saw a real heron and a fake heron, and it made me think of a police officer I photographed myself while geocaching with a few years ago. Let's talk theoretical psychology!
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Found GCAWR04 Take an Allotment Break
The family and I are staying in Lyneham for a couple of weeks following the flooding of our house (on the other side of Witney). This morning the younger geokid, the geopup, and I came out for a walk to find this geocache as well as to explore Milton-under-Wychwood and tag some of the memorial benches for OpenBenches. We sat near the cache and the geokid immediately found it. Looks like we're the second signatories of the New Year: somebody beat us to it on 5 Feb! TFTC.
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6-12 Months
"How long should we plan on renting another house to live in?" I asked, warily.
"Six to twelve months?" guessed the loss adjusters. -
While cleaning up/assessing damage following our house flood, I finally found a lost digital stylus I've been looking for for a couple of months.
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An 'XP-Pen' digital stylus on a wooden floor alongside a water-stained wall.
Unfortunately it's been sat under the water line so I don't know yet if it survived. But it's FOUND, at least!
(Look at me, finding ways to stay positive!)
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F-Day plus 3
It's only been three days since we had to evacuate our rapidly-flooding house. Here's some horror pics.
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Normal life
I want normal life back now, please.
I appreciate that it's only 40-ish hours since my house flooded and we had to move out. But with all the stress and activity that's necessarily followed, it feels like it's been so much longer.
Unrelated note: why has the person in the room above me at this hotel been … -
The calm after the storm
This morning, from my Premier Inn window, the skies are clear. I could almost forget that, just 4 miles away, my house is full of water.
Today may well be a day of waders and damage assessment, conversations with insurance companies and of working out where we'll be living for the near future.
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