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!
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
I saw a heron this morning, and it reminded me of a police officer.
If you plot a pair of axes for birds ‘looking really dorky, especially when flying’ and ‘actually being really cool’, the grey heron would sit at the sweet spot.
Right now, while my house is… not-so-inhabitable… I have a long drive to drop the kids off at school, and this morning it took us alongside the
many flooded fields between our temporary accommodation and the various kid drop-offs.
Stopped at traffic lights, I watched a heron land in what would be best-described as a large puddle, rather than in the lake on the other side of the road. The lake, it turns out… was
“guarded” by one of those fake heron things.
I didn’t get a photo of the fake heron, but I can tell you that it was one of those tacky plastic ones, not a fancy-looking metal one like this.1 Photograph copyright Christine Matthews, used under a Creative Commons license.
You’ve seen them, probably. People put them up to discourage territorial birds from visiting and eating all their fish.2 If you haven’t seen them, you might have
at least spotted the fake owls, whose purpose is slightly different because they scare off other birds.
Anyway: I found myself thinking… do birds actually fall for this? Like scarecrows, it feels like they shouldn’t (and indeed, scarecrows don’t always work,
and birds can quickly become accustomed to them). But clearly they work at least a little…?
If you don’t want birds, get a pretend bird. The same trick works for girlfriends.
Anyway, I found myself reminded of a geocaching expedition I went on outside Cambridge a couple of years ago. At
around 6am I was creeping around outside a shopping centre on a Saturday morning, looking for a tiny magnetic geocache hidden behind a sign. I’d anticipated not having to use much
“stealth” so early in the day… but nonetheless I kept getting the feeling that I was being watched.
It took me a few minutes until I worked out why: the local Home Bargains had put up a life-size standee of a police officer in just the right position that I kept catching him in the
corner of my eye and second-guessing how much my digging-through-the-bushes looked incredibly suspicious!
Rationally, I knew that this fella wasn’t real3,
but that didn’t stop him from making my brain go “wait, is that copper watching me hide behind a sign in the empty car park of a budget variety store, like he thinks I’m the world’s
loneliest drug dealer?”
I did a double-take the first time I spotted the officer, but soon realised he was fake. But the feeling of being watched persisted! There’s clearly something deeper in human
psychology, more-instinctive, that – as social animals – gives us that feeling of being watched and influences our behaviour.
There’s a wonderful and much-cited piece of research from 2010 that describes how cooperative behaviour
like proper use of an honesty box increases if you put a picture of some eyes above it: the mechanism’s not fully understood, but it’s speculated that it’s because it induces
the feeling of being watched.
I found this picture of a fake angler (this is a mannequin with a fishing pole!), which I guess is also an anti-heron measure.4
Photograph copyright Andy Beecroft, used under a Creative
Commons license.
I reckon it’s similar with birds. They’re not stupid (some of them, like corvids, are famously smart… and probably many predator birds exhibit significant intelligence too), but if
there’s something in your peripheral vision that puts you at unease… then of course you’re not going to be comfortable! And if there’s another option nearby5
that’ll work, that’s an easy win for a hungry bird.
You don’t need to actually believe that a scarecrow, a plastic bird, a poster of some eyes, or a picture of a bobby is real in order for it to have a
psychological impact. That’s why – I believe – a fake heron works. And that’s why, today, a heron reminded me of a police officer.
Footnotes
1 I guess actual herons can’t tell the difference?
2 Presumably the same technique doesn’t work with sociable birds, who would probably turn
up to try to befriend or woo the models.
3 I don’t know, but I do wonder, whether the picture is actually of a police
officer or of a model. If I were a police officer and I knew that my likeness was being used at supermarkets and the like, I’d be first to volunteer to any call-outs to anywhere
nearby them, so any suspect who ran from me would keep spotting me, following them, at every corner. You get few opportunities for pranks as a copper, I reckon, but this one would be
a blast.
4 I wonder if a fake angler is more- or less-effective than a fake heron. Somewhere, an
animal psychology PhD student is working out the experimental conditions to answer this question, I hope.
5 Remember: a bird can have a birds-eye view of feeding spots! If one option’s gonna make
them feel like they’re being watched by a predator or a competitor, and another nearby option looks almost-as-good, they’re gonna take the alternative!
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 (1, 2, 3, 4).
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.
The insurance loss adjusters came around this morning, accompanied by damage assessors and electricians and whatnot.
The process continues to feel painfully slow. We’re still one to two weeks from confirmation that the insurance company will accept liability and be ready to start paying for, y’know,
the immediate concerns like where we’re going to live.
“How long should we plan on renting another house to live in?” I asked, warily.
“Six to twelve months?” guessed the loss adjusters.
It feels inconceivable to me that we’re only at F-Day plus three; that is, three days since a flash flood rushed through the ground floor of our house and forced us to
evacuate. We’ve been able to visit since and start assessing the damage, but for now I figured that what you’d want would be the kinds of horrible pictures that make you say “wow; I’m
glad that didn’t happen to me”.
These pictures are all from F-Day itself (which happened to be Friday the 13th; delightful, eh?):
A particularly horrifying moment was when the seals on the patio doors gave way and the dining room began to flood, and we had to pivot to laying sandbags to protect the kitchen from
the dining room rather than to protect the house as a whole. (Eventually, every ground floor room would be affected.)
The water came in so quickly! An hour earlier, a deliveryperson had to wade carefully through a puddle to reach our front door. But by this point, the entire ground floor was under a
foot of dirty water.
It’s heartbreaking to see a house that you love and cherish as it starts to look like a scene from Titanic.
Soon enough we had to pivot from trying to hold back the waters to trying to save what we could. By the time the water level reached the air bricks and vents, we were having to make
split-second choices about what we had time to save.
Not all of the books made it, but most of them did.
The fire brigade wisely had us switch off our electricity supply before the first row of sockets went underwater.
The dog was incredibly brave; retreating slowly up the stairs (while barking at the rising water!). But eventually she, too, required rescue.
In one of the few moment of levity, Ruth got to ‘play firefighter’ by carrying the poor pupper out of the building. By this point, the water depth was taller than the dog is.
We’ve had a few nights in Premier Inns, but it’s a new week and it’s time to hassle the insurance company to come and have a look around. And then, maybe, we can start working out where
we’ll live so the repair work can start.
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 using a pogo stick since around 05:30?
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.
But strangely, what’s thrown me first this morning was that I couldn’t make this post submit.
Turns out my crosspost-to-mastodon checkbox was checked. Because my Mastodon server… runs on my homelab. Which is currently unplugged and in one of the highest rooms of a house with no
electricity or Internet access. (Or, probably, running water… although that matters less to a homelab.)
I think I moved it before it got wet, but yesterday is such a blur that I just don’t know. I remember we spent some time fighting back the water with sandbags and barricades. I remember
the moments each room began to fail, one by one, and we started moving whatever we could carry to higher floors (max props to folks from Eynsham Fire Bridade for helping with the heavy
stuff). But if you ask me what order we rescued things in, I just don’t know.
I guess we’ll find out when the waters recede, and it’s safe to go check.
On the second full day of our geohashing tour of Western Ireland, we’ll try to drive to somewhere close to this hashpoint (maybe up towards Knockaderry?) and see if we can walk to it
(and if it’s accessible when we get there).
Expedition
This part of Ireland’s been under moderate snow cover for several days, but overnight that turned to rain and as it warmed up early in the morning, the snow rapidly melted and poured
down into the valleys. The River Arra burst its banks in several places, and our first, second, and third attempts to find places to cross it to get closer to the hashpoint were foiled
by floods (too deep and fast-flowing to safely ford) and closed roads.
Yeah… I don’t think I’m gonna chance that (especially in a rental car!).
After seeing several fields of about the altitude of our target also deeply flooded, we opted to give up on this expedition for our own safety! Instead, we went geocaching in Newcastle
West and then went up to Foyle where we visited the museum of maritime history and learned about the history of the flying boats that were stationed there in the inter-war years.
A geocacher’s most-valuable skills include map reading, trail-finding, and rummaging around behind fence posts.
Hey look, I found a flying boat.
Parts of Oxford have been flooded for the last few
days, and apparently the worst is yet to come. I worked from home yesterday, intimidated by the available choices
of traversing flooded roads or else taking the hilly 3+ mile diversion around the problem areas, but today: I decided that it was time to man up and cycle in to the office.
Here’s where I forded Kennington Road. Yes, I just used the word “forded” to describe crossing the road.
Conveniently, we’ve somewhere along the way acquired a large pair of Wellington boots (we think they might have been Paul‘s, but as he’s now left Oxford without them, they’ve been sitting in our charity-shop-box). So I booted up
and set out. I was yawning all the way:
Police direct traffic away from a waterlogged Abingdon Road.
I had to weave my way back and forth around the cyclepaths nearest my house, and – on a couple of ocassions – get off the bike and wade it through: I’d considered riding through some of
the larger puddles – my mean pedal-ground clearance is about as high as the top of my boots, anyway – until I met a soaked cyclist coming the other way: he’d become disbalanced going
over a submarine kerbstone and fallen into the freezing water. Seeing that quickly made me choose the safer strategy!
Near Hinksey Lake, serious flood defences have been hastily erected and pumping operations are underway to clear gardens and footpaths.
Alongside the lake was one of the most flood-damaged areas, but heavy barriers had been erected and pumping engines were working at returning the water to the “right” side of them. The
lake bridge was completely closed off: it looked like it might be traversable, but if the water gets any higher, it won’t be.
In Hinksey Park, the playing fields and cycle path are completely underwater.
I took the cycle route through Hinksey Park in order to avoid the flooded parts of Abingdon Road, which runs parallel, but I’m not sure that it was much better. In the photo above,
you’d be forgiven for thinking that you’re looking at the lake… but in actual fact, the lake is behind me: that’s the playing fields. You can just about make out the line
down the middle of the cycle path, through the murky water.
Between Hinksey Lake and the Thames there are flooded driveways and gardens. The sign on the gate reads “No parking. Keep entrance clear at all times.”, in case anybody was thinking
of parking in this waist-deep water.
Pressing on, I came to the Thames Path, which my route typically follows for a short distance to the footbridge into the city centre. And that’s when I realised quite how high the river
really is.
To the right of the bush – the river. To the left – the footpath. You’d be forgiven if you can’t tell the difference.
By the time I found myself on a footpath with a current, I realised that my route might need a little bit of a rethink. With the bridge I was aiming for just ahead,
though, I was able to double-back and cut through an alleyway (between some seriously at-risk houses), duck under a couple of “footpath closed” barriers, and splash out to the
bridgehead.
From the bridge, it’s clear how much the waters have risen. The path on the left continues to get deeper and deeper underwater: when I’m working in a different office or running
training, that’s the route I take to work!
By the time I was on the higher, better-reinforced East bank for the river, things began to improve, and within a few minutes I was right in the city centre. There, you wouldn’t know
that, only a short distance away, a significant number of streets were underwater. To sit in the dry, on Broad Street, in the middle of Oxford, it seems strange to think that on the
edge of town, people are being evacuated from their homes.
Further reading:
Flood warning for Kennington, from the
Environment Agency (looks like we’re just on the right side of the road not to be included in the “flood warning area”).
“Live”upstreamanddownstreamwater level measurements at nearby Iffley Lock (there’s a beautiful moment in the graphs
for yesterday morning when they clearly started using the lock itself to “dump” water downstream, occasionally bringing the level to within the typical range.
