the tale of two days

When I said I wanted rain, I didn't mean the whole year's lot in 4 hours. After a fairly harrowing 2 days of many tales, we are pretty well back to normal.

Many thanks to all the lovely people who have emailed asking how we are. Thank goodness for the i-phone which makes it possible to function and keep in touch. I have tried to email everyone back - if I missed you I do apologise. When I finally got back on line on Monday there were 200 emails to deal with and that was before Tuesday's little thrill of the moment. If you can bear to read it, I shall bore you with all the details.

Monday started out as a usual Monday - I went for my swim and Ian for his walk - we came back and started work. Ross and Jilll (my brother and s-i-l) are on a cruise around Australia and they phoned and Ian arranged to pick them up from the train station at noon. Down Ian went but no Ross and Jill - waited for a second train and then came back as forgot mobile and they might have phoned. Back he went and spent time peering at customers disembarking from Freo train. No luck - no phone calls. So we carried on working away. It was very hot and sultry and we had the air con on - sky started looking black and they had mentioned thunderstorms but then they often do and they never appear. I did get the washing in 'in case'. Then I decided to pop up to Fresh Provisions to get yoghurt for breakfast and sometime to sustain us as we had missed lunch. It was dark when I drove up and everyone had car lights on but not a bother - join in the fun. Got to the shops, left the car windows down and discovered their power was out (all around the area) but still open for business (I think their doors wouldn't close); wandered in and then noticed the heavens had opened up so ran out to the car to close the windows - got drenched to the bone in doing so. Back inside to negotiate my yoghurt with fresh raspberries (no scales working) and something for lunch and a couple of chocolate fish. Mad dash to car as hailstones starting to arrive - no dry place to clean my glasses so drove home with murky view of the world. The path to our door was pretty waterladed so I had to wade through. I do think I missed the drama though as after that the water flooded the street and we have seen pics of cars with water up to the tops of their tyres etc. Nothing like that here at 6 Smith Street.

So we carried on except that the lights kept flicking off and on and Ian decided to pull the plugs on the computers. I spent my time packing foil intro packs watching the rain pelting down and hoping none of our trees would crash - many branches but nothing dramatic. One branch had the cheek to fall in my waterlily. Then Ian could smell a burning smell but we couldn't find anything. While he was doing that I noticed water on the floor in our sunroom - the leaves outside (these are ceiling to floor french windows and doors) were blocking the water from draining so the water had nowhere to go other than creep in under the windows. Not too dramatic and in fact the sunroom looks remarkably cleaner and tidier now. Leaves moved off. With our trees we pay for the privilege and try to clear up leaves all the time. We had, in fact, spent the weekend cleaning up so now we simply have another round. Just as well there is a green collection in a week or two. The only thing which got wet was a piece of left over Romeo which had managed to drop on the floor and was sitting in a gluggy pile. And Ian's little nearly finished garden shed did not move an inch... Plus there was loads of lightening and thunder.

Couldn't post out any mail which had been ready as the Postal sorting centre had been evacuated with floods roaring through so our apologies to people whose mail left a day later. And the people whose mail won't be going out until today - we kinda stopped half way between the invoices. I think Ian did quickly put the 'puter back on to do a back up and then pulled the plug once more.

In the meantime we still hadn't heard from Ross and Jill and we went off to Fremantle to try and find them at the ship. But not an easy task as when we went to shut the front door it wouldn't, and after finally finding an old rusty file, Ian filed away for about an hour. Success and off we set on a relatively speedy trip to Freo considering the traffic, the landslide at Kings Park and the water. Got to the boat and some kind passenger got in touch with them and R and J came down. They had been there all the time in a different spot. So anyway we caught up with them and went off for an eat and drink and took them back before they got locked out.

this is what our fuse box looks like now. It has a cover but that has gone.

Yesterday morning we could still smell smoke and burning and sniffed around the garden to no avail. I went off to get the papers and Ian opened the fuse box and this is what he saw and it was smoking and little sparks..... couldn't turn it off as it was the main switch. So we could have a shower (gas) and drink coffee (gas) and wait for the sparkies to come which they did before too long. Obviously they were very busy. When they arrived they said we were very lucky that the house hadn't caught fire - doesn't that make you feel good!!! After they had finished we were $480 lighter in the pocket but apparently not about to burn down.

this is the offending main switch - you don't think Ian was going to attempt to turn it off....

Whenever the computer goes off I am reluctant to get going for a while but we turned them back on and I started answering some of my emails when there was an almighty BANG and everything went off. So we were actually worse off and we had to wait for them to come back - the supervisor was mystified as to why but now we are reluctant to turn the air con back on. All the fuses had blown. Too scarey by half.

Earlier in the day since I had spent most of my day packaging slushies and wool tops - I decided I had better take them to the warehouse something I had quite reluctant to do since I know the landlord does minimal maintenance and there have been problems in the past. I very tentatively opened the door but all I found was a small puddle of water. However the other 3 tenants did not fare so well at all as they had all been flooded and for Nigel the roof had fallen in - all of his stock of clothes was ruined and the landlord does not have insurance. I felt very sorry for them but very grateful we had been spared. The thought of cleaning it up is worse than what damage there might be.

But that's not all - Grant phoned and asked if we could take his hire car back as the girl staying in his house had not done so. Plus he had received a phone call (he is in Singapore) from the storage company where he has his and Bruce and Kazuko's worldly possessions stored, to say there had been flooding. I think that is appalling as it surely is a maintenance issue. Anyway off we went and there were lots of others arriving to check their stuff. Water flowing out of lots of units but not Grant's - his lucky day. Only then did I feel safe sending Bruce an email to tell him.

On the strength of 2 days drama we popped home, had a shower and took ourselves to Cantina with a bottle of Elderton's 2000 Command Shiraz to enjoy with a lovely meal.

Today around here it looks like any other day - hot, sunny and humid. And there are an awful lot of people far worse off than us. I went for my swim, Ian for his walk and we are doing what we usually do - working away. Holey Moleys I am very sorry but I have 2 to post - please hang in.

I didn't get to take photos of all the excitement but Jaslyn has sent me 3 from her back garden - much more hail than we got and a back garden all in green.