For a few weeks in February 2014 our village was the centre of media attention. The Thames burst its banks and flowed through the Main Street. Life took on a surreal quality. The media descended on us, the army and the fire brigade pitched in and ev...
It was getting increasingly difficult to get out of our street. My faithful wellies are great on the allotment but only come up to my calfs. The water beyond our barriers and coming down the main road already threatened to come over them and before long would be up to my thighs. There was a way in, as I've mentioned, through the school grounds but no way on foot from there back into the village. The best way to get help to us would have been from neighbouring Slough then through the school but struggle as we might we couldn't get this through to The Parish Offices at the other end of the village who were coordinating the village's response and who the Council in Maidenhead saw as the key link.
Meanwhile the Slough Road through the centre of the village resembled a scene from Venice rather than leafy Berkshire. The local Italian restaurant, named ironically Piccollo Venicia even had a gondola bobbing outside.
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It was not the only boat plying its way through the village. Most notably and heroically a local volunteer and hero David Cannon became our lifeline ferrying people and supplies across the 'river' in his canoe.
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The Duck, an amphibious vehicle normally used to ferry tourists round nearby Windsor also came into play.
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Our sense of being cut off was psychological as much as real. There was actually a world out there and by exiting through the school we could be out and about but somehow our whole world closed in, getting hold of sandbags and building defences our only thought. The advantage of a town house is our main living areas and vital services were above ground level. We could and to an extent did live a near normal life above the rising waters but our focus on the emergency was such that instead we spent whole days wading through the waterlogged streets. Work went on hold. I work for the local Council for whom the emergency was to become the focus of everything the next few days. I felt more useful where I was, if only as the eyes and ears, than sitting in a dry office writing policy documents.
Our sense of being cut off was such that, even regular visits from our good friends from nearby Taplow couldn't dissuade us from the notion we were trapped. Datchet and the floods became our whole horizen. Sue and Rob were to prove our saviours in terms of getting around the village. They scoured local angling shops and bought us a pair of waders each. Supplies were running low unsurprisingly but Sandra acquired a rather fetching thigh length pair while I, less glamorously but very practically acquired a waist high pair. If you are not familiar with waders I was resplendent when venturing out in waist high rubberised trousers that from the calf down became Wellington boots. They rubbed like hell around the calf, where trouser became boot, but that is another story.
Anyway, resplendent in the waders I could now get about traversing the village and arriving at the Parish Offices or wherever I might be headed with the appearance of someone who had come, as indeed I felt I had, from the 'front line'.
SORRY IF IT'S A BIT STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS, THAT'S JUST THE WAY IT CAME OUT. PLEASE VOTE IF YOU ARE ENJOYING?
