Last week we were ‘flooded out’ as they say, although we were in at the time; snugly tucked up in bed while the water slowly, I’m guessing slowly, seeped across our ground floor!
I’m always first up, rushing down two flights of stairs to get to the loo – you know the feeling! Splash, splash, splash as my bed-cosy feet paddle through icy cold water! Sitting on the loo (sorry maybe too much information here!) I survey our new ‘indoor pond’ complete with underwater scales and floating loo brush, and as usual I’m very aware of my choices as to how I can respond. The first thought that always comes to mind is to cry! I think this is a conditioned response – by that I mean that it would seem ‘acceptable’ to cry and not out of the ordinary in the situation – almost expected in some way even? My second thought is what’s the point? I still have to deal with the situation in the end so why not just bypass the ‘crying’ stage and get on with sorting things out? I also remembered all those times I’ve seen people who have their homes totally flooded or even washed away – our situation was nothing compared to that. A bit of perspective really helps I find!
So by 6.30am I was busy inside with cloths, mop and bucket, while Tom was outside digging trenches and diverting water. After a couple of hours the situation was much better, fires were lit and we were upstairs eating breakfast.
Our mini flood did make me realise though how the amount of ‘stuff’ we have has built up again since we moved here 6 years ago. There’s nothing like lifting soggy items off the floor and searching for places to put them to make you realise you have possibly accumulated more than you need – again! I say again, because when we arrived here we had been through a huge downsizing operation which involved moving from a house with 5 bedrooms and several extremely full sheds , into a campervan. Its interesting how keeping life simple seems to be a real challenge for us humans!
