The Nice People Thread, No.16: A Universe of Niceness.

LydiaJ

This evening I went to see my friends who until recently lived next door. Their new house is lovely - period features (mine and their old one are ~1970) and all done up with the sort of kitchen and bathrooms that people on TV install to create wow factor. I see now why they wanted to move - plus they are 5 people to our 3, and next door is smaller than my house.

I'll miss having them next door - but on the plus side, their new house is on my route cycling home from work, so I'll be able to drop in and see them quite easily. Meanwhile I have managed to find bike lights that work. My first cycle-to-work day of the new school term will be Monday. Fortunately I only have to go into work on Mon, Wed & Fri next week, so I can ease gently back into the cycling before I have to start doing it 4 days in a row the week after.

In other news, my online friend in Texas has posted to say that she and her family are safe - her home is in the area affected, but she got out to a safer part of the state before the flooding started. Awful what's happening there, though.

vivatifosi

I'm glad to hear you will still be able to see your friends Lydia. You have mentioned them many times and clearly value each other's company, so hopefully you will still see them nearly as much.

Sorry though to hear about your friend in Texas. I can imagine someone starting a social programme and calling it The Ark as the number of people affected is massive and almost biblical.

Generali used to say that in this country we don't appreciate how benign our weather is compared to countries such as the US and Aus, and incidents such as this, Katrina, the Quuensland floods, the bushfires in Victoria and even other natural disasters such as the Boxing Day tsunami and Fukushima, show how right he is.

We may moan about the weather and cold damp summers, or the odd snowflake, but we are really lucky compared to others around the world. Heck, even our native animals are cute and not poisonous or with huge teeth.

GDB2222

vivatifosi wrote: »

I'm glad to hear you will still be able to see your friends Lydia. You have mentioned them many times and clearly value each other's company, so hopefully you will still see them nearly as much.

Sorry though to hear about your friend in Texas. I can imagine someone starting a social programme and calling it The Ark as the number of people affected is massive and almost biblical.

Generali used to say that in this country we don't appreciate how benign our weather is compared to countries such as the US and Aus, and incidents such as this, Katrina, the Quuensland floods, the bushfires in Victoria and even other natural disasters such as the Boxing Day tsunami and Fukushima, show how right he is.

We may moan about the weather and cold damp summers, or the odd snowflake, but we are really lucky compared to others around the world. Heck, even our native animals are cute and not poisonous or with huge teeth.

All the native animals with big teeth have been killed off! Some parts of Europe are reintroducing bears and wolves, which seems very brave to me.

In Houston, they got more rain in a couple of days than London gets in a year. It is hardly surprisingly the drains don't cope. What I do find surprising is that some lorry drivers appear to have driven straight off the raised freeway, down the off ramp, and into a flood. What did they expect to happen then?

Pyxis

Haven't they reintroduced wolves somewhere in Scotland?


Or were they just talking about it?


I'd rather meet a wolf unexpectedly than a bear, though.

Bears are seriously scary. You can negotiate your way out of a contretemps with a wolf.

LydiaJ

vivatifosi wrote: »

I'm glad to hear you will still be able to see your friends Lydia. You have mentioned them many times and clearly value each other's company, so hopefully you will still see them nearly as much.

Thanks viva. I hope so too.

vivatifosi wrote: »

Sorry though to hear about your friend in Texas. I can imagine someone starting a social programme and calling it The Ark as the number of people affected is massive and almost biblical.

My friend has heard that her home was not (or not yet) flooded, but having left it before the rain arrived, she's now unable to return to it for at least the next week because all the roads are impassable.

vivatifosi wrote: »

Generali used to say that in this country we don't appreciate how benign our weather is compared to countries such as the US and Aus, and incidents such as this, Katrina, the Quuensland floods, the bushfires in Victoria and even other natural disasters such as the Boxing Day tsunami and Fukushima, show how right he is.

We may moan about the weather and cold damp summers, or the odd snowflake, but we are really lucky compared to others around the world. Heck, even our native animals are cute and not poisonous or with huge teeth.

Indeed. We don't get volcanoes or earthquakes here either. I sometimes wonder if that's why the industrial revolution happened here first - because all the other countries were too busy dealing with the challenges of their environment.

GDB2222 wrote: »

In Houston, they got more rain in a couple of days than London gets in a year. It is hardly surprisingly the drains don't cope.

That kind of statistic reminds me of the 2007 Gloucestershire floods, which I experienced first hand:

On 20th July, two months' rain fell in just 14 hours resulting in two emergencies – widespread flooding and tap water shortages...

Link

But as they say, everything's bigger in Texas. Our floods, although devastating for the people directly affected, were on a much smaller scale:

... affecting 350,000 people. It is estimated that the flooding and water crisis cost the county of Gloucestershire £50 million.

GDB2222 wrote: »

What I do find surprising is that some lorry drivers appear to have driven straight off the raised freeway, down the off ramp, and into a flood. What did they expect to happen then?

Similarly, I find it surprising that many of the people shown on TV having left their homes able to take with them nothing but the clothes they were wearing and perhaps a small backpack evidently did not think to bring any kind of coat or waterproof, or even clothes with long sleeves. They are then described as cold as well as wet when arriving at rescue centres having been out in the rain for hours. I know that the weather in Texas is usually hot, and still actually quite warm despite the rain, but surely these people must own one or two garments warmer than a t-shirt, and I would have thought they would have realised that being wet makes you feel colder and that therefore it would be good to take such a garment with them??

chris_m

Pyxis wrote: »

I'd rather meet a wolf unexpectedly than a bear, though.
Bears are seriously scary. You can negotiate your way out of a contretemps with a wolf.

The National Park Rangers are advising hikers in Glacier National Park and other Rocky Mountain parks to be alert for bears and take extra precautions to avoid an encounter.
They advise park visitors to wear little bells on their clothes so they make noise when hiking. The bell noise allows bears to hear them coming from a distance and not be startled by a hiker accidentally sneaking up on them. This might cause a bear to charge.
Visitors should also carry a pepper spray can just in case a bear is encountered. Spraying the pepper into the air will irritate the bear's sensitive nose and it will run away.
It is also a good idea to keep an eye out for fresh bear scat so you have an idea if bears are in the area. People should be able to recognize the difference between black bear and grizzly bear scat.
Black bear droppings are smaller and often contain berries, leaves, and possibly bits of fur. Grizzly bear droppings tend to contain small bells and smell of pepper.

PasturesNew

I suspect, with major evacuations and weather reports that it's gonna be a biggun .... most people still think "it'll be OK" and "it'll be OK here" and "we'll stay here, it'll be all right".

The trouble is, you're between a rock and a hard place.

The best course of action is to pack neatly and leave in plenty of time - but where to? Do you have the money for that? Is your house safe from looters? How daft will you look if it didn't come near you? And you'll still be having to do "life as usual".... so you plough on, hoping it'll be OK.

And you keep believing/hoping you'll be OK until it reaches critical point, at which time people pack .... ideally they'd have made a list and got everything ready to go etc ahead of time ... all ready to grab and go - but they don't. And/or, you did, but while you thought your roof might blow off, what actually happened is there's suddenly 5' of water outside your door and your neatly packed trolley can't be pulled through that, so it's a quick grab for a couple of plastic bags and you're into an inflatable boat that's passing.

LydiaJ

PasturesNew wrote: »

I suspect, with major evacuations and weather reports that it's gonna be a biggun .... most people still think "it'll be OK" and "it'll be OK here" and "we'll stay here, it'll be all right".

The trouble is, you're between a rock and a hard place.

The best course of action is to pack neatly and leave in plenty of time - but where to? Do you have the money for that? Is your house safe from looters? How daft will you look if it didn't come near you? And you'll still be having to do "life as usual".... so you plough on, hoping it'll be OK.

And you keep believing/hoping you'll be OK until it reaches critical point, at which time people pack .... ideally they'd have made a list and got everything ready to go etc ahead of time ... all ready to grab and go - but they don't. And/or, you did, but while you thought your roof might blow off, what actually happened is there's suddenly 5' of water outside your door and your neatly packed trolley can't be pulled through that, so it's a quick grab for a couple of plastic bags and you're into an inflatable boat that's passing.

Absolutely. The "still have to do life as usual" thing is a big feature, I think. When the 2007 floods happened here, it was in school holidays, so I didn't have much in the way of "life as usual" responsibilities, and was free to take off to somewhere unaffected. Our house wasn't flooded, but we did lose mains water for a few weeks. When the water went off, I decided that the best thing to do was to take my kids (then aged only 6 & 3) and leave the county. If it happened now, I think we'd stay and see what opportunities there were to help in some way, but I couldn't have done anything with two that age to look after. Decreasing the number of people for whom water had to be provided was the most constructive thing to do. Besides, it meant that LNE could have all the gear out of the caravan for living without mains water, and he needed to stay because he was needed at work. He was a hospital manager, and so had lots to do organising alternative water provision for the hospital. The kids and I were due to go on holiday to visit friends in Scotland at the end of that week anyway, so I just rang them up and asked if we could come early. If I'd had a job I still needed to turn up to, then leaving wouldn't have been so easy.

silvercar

Don't quote, will delete this waffle.

We have the same with our overseas account. For years literally, everytime we would go into the branch and ask for help using the account online. Everytime we sign loads of papers, get given loads of passwords, access codes, PIN numbers etc Then get sent away with the promise it will work. It never did. Even sat down with the girl in the branch and she tried to get it to work and it failed at the point of "we have sent a verification code to your phone" that never arrived.

Eventually after 5 years, we have something that vaguely works. The instructions are mumbo jumbo eg double click on the 3rd tab from the left. The added complication being the foreign language that google translate makes worse not better and their banking terminology that is nothing like ours.

GDB2222

PasturesNew wrote: »

FINALLY!: I did it.

.... giving memorable information

Well done for persevering.

It gets worse if, for security reasons, you give deliberately false 'memorable information'. I can remember which school I went to first, but remembering what I told the bank is far harder.