Tornadoes, floods and death

With headlines like these we reflected on the worst weather ever experienced in June in the UK yesterday.
There were two tornadoes in Yorkshire and the nation repeatedly heard about the harrowing story of a failed rescue of a 28 year old man who was trapped whilst clearing a drain in Hull. The services spent several hours trying to free him as the flood waters rose and eventually he was drowned. Helicopters were rescuing stranded people from tops of buildings in Meadow Hall in Sheffield as floodwaters rose by 4 feet in a matter of minutes. Cars across South yorkshire were floating away, the picture is of a road in Hull.
As usual roads were in chaos and most mainline trains were cancelled...........and there is more rain to come!
However summer has apparently arrived, as we were invited to our first Strawberry and cream tea of the season on Sunday and Wimbledon started yesterday.
We were transfixed by rain delays which perfectly set up Tim Henman`s match against Carlos Moya for the mid evening - as despite only winning two matches all year, Tim then pulled out the best tennis we`ve seen him play, to give us a 5 set thriller poised at a delicious 5-5 in the final set until the Umpire stopped play because of bad light.
As to the Bellies of Guisborough we have a major roof leak, Debbie has broken a finger in a door hinge, Jonny and Ruth simultaneously want to be taught to drive, the broken elbow has recovered and I resumed my guitar lessons with Kenny the rockstar.
Work is as you`d expect with me having to learn to take some, shall we say, very challenging and robust management decisions which means naffing people off bigtime!

Floods and prayer request in the North

Today tried to drive into West Yorkshire to visit John and Iris, as Scott my brother in law was over from New Zealand. Two diversions due to flooded roads later, we arrived! Yes it has been raining so hard over the last few days that yet again the rivers are bursting and the roads are closed all over North Yorks.

Our roof has become religious and is now holy thus leaking all over Debbies bed!

Still on the foggy, misty and wet side at least we are all at low risk of getting skin cancer.

Regarding the rest of our lives - the business of Mental Health is becoming rather pressured at present as we have entered into the sharp environment of preparing for our Foundation Trust application. This has been described as akin to launching a FTSE100 company. As Angus is not renowned for the detailed knowledge applied to his finances - quite literally your prayer ought to be "Heaven help the Health service"!! If anyone wanted theological proof of God`s sense of humour then just ask "Who let Dr Bell loose in a Directorate with an annual budget of £60 million and a requirement to save £1.5 million in costs annually?"!!!!!

Seriously this is a busy time and has some major implications for healthcare for 1.5 million people - so we`d better get it right - so any spare prayers would be appreciated for the next few months.

Guns...... lots of guns!!

Well what do you do to celebrate an 8 year old boy`s birthday?

You take him and a friend to London to see Dinosaurs and Tanks!!! Yes we hived on down to the railway station at Northallerton where you can park all day for mere pennies and we were in the Natural History Museum by 10.40 a.m. James was 8 and so enjoying himself that he got all the names mixed up - so we visited the Imperial History Museum to see the animatronic T-Rex, fooled about on the Tube and in a London phone box and went to the "Natural War" Museum where we saw Monty`s tank, examined the shell damage in a Jagdpanzer, discussed the relative merits of the Spitfire versus the Focke-Wulfe and sat in a Halifax bomber cockpit.

We went past "Huge"Park Corner and had lunch in "Convent" Garden at "Fire and Stone" Pizza restaurant (TOP RECOMMENDATION!). I think James had as much fun as Dad!!!

The day closed off with a visit to Camden market and a dash to Hamleys toyshop.

On the big day itself, there was a tanktastic birthday cake in the form of a Tiger (PanzerV) in desert livery and a new red bike with front suspension