Post-Apocalypse

The world is grey and wet today, and a bit scary.

We keep hearing bits and pieces on the local news and from neighbours about damage. Everybody is shocked, and subdued, the world has unexpectedly changed its shape, and it is taking a bit of getting used to.

Pooley Bridge in Ullswater has collapsed, really collapsed, in a now-it-is-in-the-lake sort of way. Regular readers might recall a picture of it on these pages once before. I have put the picture on again as a sort of farewell, because it is gone now, although so are lots of others. Staveley bridges are badly cracked. The bridge we cross for the Kentmere school run has been partly demolished and is closed, but there is no other way out of the valley, so it is still being used, precariously, by everybody who lives there. We were turned away from the bridges in Kendal by the police on our way home late last night, and had to take a detour round to find one that was still safe to use, and the policeman warned us that we had better be quick before they all closed.

This sort of thing is going to make life a bit challenging for a while. We are a watery sort of county, and bridges are important, you have got to cross a lot of them to go anywhere in particular, and quite a few of them have ceased to function now, as have several of the roads, some of which have been completely washed away.

The last of the weekend’s tourists who couldn’t get away yesterday left this morning, a long, defeated stream of cars, and the Lake District is midwinter empty.

It has affected life in all sorts of unexpected ways, lots of little shocks when suddenly things don’t work the way they are supposed to any more, suddenly the world is not predictable any more. Mark had sent a car that he was mending for somebody to a garage in Kendal last week, because there was a manufacturer’s recall on its wiring. He tried to ring them this morning to see if he could collect it, but there was no answer. It turned out that they have got no telephones or electricity any more. They were flooded three feet deep, we discovered, and all the cars that were parked there, waiting repair or on the forecourt to be sold are sodden and ruined, filled with filthy water.

After that he went to the farm to try and fix his taxi, the headlights somehow filled up with water and one of them doesn’t work. He thought maybe it was a fuse, but it isn’t, it is some other electrical nuisance which might need an expensive bit to fix it. We won’t be fixing it for a while, though, as there is no point in trying to call Autoparts, because they are in Kendal, just across the road from the other garage, and they don’t have telephones any more either.

Whilst he was across at the farm, Mark had a crisis meeting with his sister, who is a civil engineer. She is self employed as well, and has been doing road surveys across the county. She can’t do this any more, and has had to stop, perhaps for months, because of course when you are doing a survey of traffic it has got to be normal traffic, not traffic that is frantically trying to get away from rising flood waters, or traffic that is trying to find a different way to go home because all other roads have collapsed.

This is not brilliant for their domestic economy either, we will have to pull together a bit, they have got the appalling problem of a faulty boiler today, and Mark is going over tomorrow to see if he can fix it.

Despite all the awfulness round us, we had a coffee and a quiet think this morning and couldn’t help but marvel at our good fortune. We are dry and safe, not like lots of people – by some miracle Mark mended the boiler last week, we have got plenty of firewood, and can stay warm and get wet clothes and shoes dry.

We can still earn some money driving taxis. Obviously our biggest customers are tourists, closely followed by local people who spend money that they have earned from tourists: and both sorts are going to be in short supply for a while: but we will still have an income, we are not a guest house or a gift shop.

Just to make things feel even better,  Number One Daughter phoned up this evening with the generous news that she had won some gift vouchers for John Lewis and wanted to share, so she is going to buy some of the children’s Christmas presents, which was just lovely of her.

We have already paid for most of Christmas anyway, regular readers will know that we have had various money jars hidden about the place for special occasions. We filled them over the summer months, when we were busy, and now we have emptied them one at a time as we have paid for Christmassy things. We have salted away winter supplies of coffee and soap powder and dog food and useful things, and so things are not at all as bad as they might be.

We are among the most fortunate people in the county. Today, looking around us, we can’t quite believe how generous the fates have been with us. We are going to be perfectly all right, we will weather this storm and come out fine in the springtime.

The picture below is the field next to the gateway at the farm. It is usually not at all like a lake.