Catholic and Loving it!

You may recall recently I mentioned when we here in Hull experienced the worst floods in twenty years. Today, the rain was back.

This time it's worse, for a start a man has died which kind of takes away from the fun side of things. It's rained literally all day and almost everybody in Hull apart from me seems to have had the day off. Our garden is underwater...

While I was at work Ella monitored the water levels by taking photographs of bricks. At times the water level moved alarmingly fast.

The grass under the water made the water look green. This combined with steps going down in to the water created a scene not unlike Venice (you may need to squint to see it).

Now came the dilemma. We had rented a DVD from Blockbuster video and it was due back today. What to do? I phoned the store and there was no answer, probably they had closed due to flooding but maybe they were just not answering the phone. Would we be fined if we failed to return the DVD? I decided to cycle in the direction of Blockbuster and see how I fared, after all I had already made it home from work and I wanted an excuse to cycle around taking photos of flooding. As it turned out Blockbuster was closed but I dumped my DVD in the slot and went on a little sightseeing trip.

I saw a flooded pub (tragic):

I saw the emergency services. In this case they were rescuing elderly folk from an old peoples home.

I saw lots of policemen wandering around just watching people and one of them frowned at my picture taking. He didn't say anything, he just frowned. I think he would have preferred me to be at home or maybe he just frowns a lot.

Anyone who came to Hull to watch football at the old Boothferry Park stadium will recognise this bridge:

The road dips under the bridge here so in places that water is pretty deep. Just by the bridge I saw this lady who is not suitably dressed for the occasion:

It's not often you get to see a bikini on a Catholic blog but that's not just a bikini, that's an M&S bikini. Presumably it's made from hand picked Alaskan salmon or something.

The flooding at St. Joseph's:

Note that the flooding here is nowhere near as bad as the stained glass windows.

Finally, here's the ornamental lake at Peter Pan Park. Usually, the water is confined by a small oval wall and those craggy walls you can see sticking up are well outside of it:

So there you have it. Hull flooded. I phoned Fr. Massie to check there were no elderly parishioners stranded in flooded homes in need of youthful types with buckets and he didn't know. "People don't come to the Church in their hour of need anymore" he said forlornly. I phoned St. Charles (which has cellars underground) and all was well there also (some flooding but Fr. Stephen said all was in hand). Fr. Massie assured Michelle that all his three parishes are okay and we don't need to rush around and save any pews so if it turns out anything is ruined it's all. his. fault.

The rain has stopped now (nearly midnight) and we hope it will stay that way. Michelle now has water in her house! Hopefully the damage will be limited but I am sure she would appreciate your prayers. Prayers all round really.. I can't help but think of all elderly living on their own (in four bedroom houses - the swines) with water seeping under the door, it must be pretty frightening.