Jamie drove back from Scotland on Thursday night during the worst of the weather and actually got back within 2 mins of what his sat nav predicted. It was a 3 hour (ish) journey driving in wet n windy conditions. He expected the predicted 3 hours to be more like 5 but did really well. I was just glad to see him home after I'd being watching the local news reports. After such a crappy journey, the worst flood he encountered was 2 miles from our house
A friend of ours is a volunteer for the Bay Search and Rescue (Morecambe Bay). They have gone up to Cockermouth as they have an all terrain amphibious vehicle which can get to places that boats and 4X4's cant. They have been assisting with evacuating residents - mainly the elderly and delivering supplies to those in need. When told that Gordon Brown would be visiting they were told to look tidy
Er hello? You can imagine what the response was 
Not sure who it was that told them to look tidy though. I'm not sure how many bongo owners there are in Cockermouth/Workington area. They are very thin on the ground forum membership wise though. Us and Harry are the only ones to really fly the flag for Cumbria
I used to work for a firm who paid us all by cheque (when everyone else was being paid straight into their accounts) and the staff collectively asked if we could be paid direct into our accounts, one of the reasons we gave was that it always seemed to be raining on pay day but we had to go out and get wet to pay our cheques in. Did they change the system? Did they 'eck. They had a load of brollies made up with the company name and phone number on and gave us one each (for advertising purposes, no doubt). Still got mine, though. Still useful 
taking most of the land beneath our back garden with it. There's a water treatment place with an access road, next to the river, on our side of the river, well, the road has gone along with most of the treatment centre. The bridge which once linked our side with the other side of the river has dissapeared spoiling our evening walks and cycle round the block! More sadly a churchground was also severely damaged just the other side of the river from us. If you search for sjjphotograhy on flickr, there's a lot of pictures I have uploaded there. As for us, well, due to the land coming away under us we now have a 1" gap on the ceiling where the extension meets the house and are waiting for someone to come and have a look for us... no rush obviously! 
