Flooded - A JustWriteIt TrueStory

Sit down and shut up

Shortly after the water subsided there was another village meeting to look, as we understood it, at what had happened and what we could do to improve things moving forward. We'd moved into temporary exile in Eton by this time but came back specially. What happened at this meeting still rankles.

It was chaired by Mrs. Double Barrelled Somebody who had chaired most of the village flood meetings. She wasn't chair of the Parish Council as such but the real Chair had been, and continued to be, a peripheral, almost invisible presence through the whole emergency. Mrs Double Barrelled Somebody was in the habit of shutting people up to move the agenda on and you have to accept that that is sometimes necessary; but what happened at the 'wind up' meeting took my breath away.

You'll remember that all nine of the houses in our particular road had been flooded internally and most of us either had or would soon have to move out. Bearing in mind relatively few households in the village were in this position, for reasons I have explained, you'd have thought she might be interested to hear what we had to say but when a neighbour of ours stood up to talk about what had happened to us she quickly put him down and I can't forget the phrase she used, "We are here to talk about the village", she said. If we thought we'd been off their radar before this pretty well confirmed that view.

With that they pretty well went back to the self congratulatory stuff. They didn't get off altogether lightly and people demanded to know what would be done to improve the villages defences.

The bund would be restored at the private school that had failed to replace flood defences after alterations because it spoiled their view and the gap under the railway would be blocked. They were still pursuing the absentee landlord about his wall but didn't seem to hold out much hope. The big news was a continuation of the flood relief scheme to move the water down stream but, guess what, it would start the other side of Datchet, we would be literally between the two schemes. Our immediate take was that we wouldn't be protected but the logic seems to be there will be somewhere for the water to flow away too. The problem is we are sandwiched between the river and the M4 motorway. The only place they could put the flood relief channel is the other side of the river but that of course is Royal land and doesn't seem to be up for grabs.

It will take several years to build the flood relief scheme so it's fingers crossed till then. Once built it will take the water from the other side of Datchet to Shepperton which is where my son and his family happen to live.