Storm Imogen.

Storm Imogen is making itself felt as winds up to 70mph batter the area. There have been some sudden squalls but mainly it has just been very windy. Any rooks sitting in their nests in the trees next to my neighbour's lake must have felt quite sea-sick. Driving to work at lunchtime I was glad of the shelter of the high hedges on either side of the road. On the main road as I drove past the open gates to Youlston Park the cross-wind gave the car quite an unnerving push. 

I left a little earlier than usual as I had booked the car in at the garage to have a leak checked out. After driving through the last lot of floods I noticed that the carpet in the passenger footwell was rather soggy. I dried it out the best I could but was hoping that Alec could find the hole letting in the water. Unfortunately, unlike my trusty old Landrovers, the carpets are fixed to the floor and it would take at least 3 hours just to get them up. As I'm not too keen to pay out that much the advice was to put some newspaper down and then keep an eye on the situation. It might possibly have been water getting in under the door when I drove a bit too quickly through the floods. I may just remove the carpet in the footwell to let it dry faster. After all I'll be keeping my car until it's not worth selling on.

In town the storm had caused major traffic chaos with people being stuck in traffic for up to 2 hours. Apart from the ongoing road works which have closed one side of a major route into town the new bridge had to be closed due to the winds and then a tree fell over at the bottom of Pilton Street. Once I had collected the car I had intended to drop in at the Co-Op as I had run out of tinned cat food for Squeaky but when I saw the grid-locked traffic I changed my plans. Instead I walked past the stationary traffic and bought a tin of cat food at the petrol station. That's when I took the above photo. The fallen tree was the same size as the standing tree on the other side of the water. 

(Photo by Mike Lake) I took this photo from Facebook showing a better view of the fallen tree. There are reports of very high waves along the coast and many homes have lost power. We're snug and warm at home though when I took the rubbish up for tomorrow's collection I left the re-cycling box in the shed. I could just see plastic bottles being scattered everywhere if I tried to take it up this evening. The re-cycling lorry comes some time in the afternoon so if the winds have died down I'll take the box up when I go to work tomorrow.

Speedy's eye was almost back to normal this morning so a trip to the vets' isn't necessary thank goodness.