Dizzy

A deceptive bit of blue sky
Today has actually been wet wet WET

Last night it rained and rained and rained and rained and rained and rained and rained. The water from the night's rainfall was still running into the rivers this morning and conditions rapidly got worse.

Apart from dropping Tess at school, a ten minute anxiety service assessment call and a walk in the woods, I have spent the whole day following Gemma's progress across the country: sending and receiving texts, making phone calls, begging for help, checking rail websites and tweeting to rail networks on twitter. She missed the open day she was trying to get to so I had to phone the uni and beg them to help us. Unfortunately they insisted it finished at 4pm and that was that.
They phoned back later and said she can visit tomorrow.

Sadly it seems the whole day may have been a complete waste of time and money. The stations were flooded at Tiverton and Taunton, the roads in and out of the area were affected - so even the coach that was laid on had to take a detour, a railway tunnel somewhere between Bristol and Reading was flooded - causing an enormous delay and many other trains were cancelled or delayed. She missed breakfast and lunch, and whenever I spoke to her she was desperate to find a loo. Her phone battery finally became so low I had to stop phoning her.
We altered her journey when it looked like she would be hanging around in High Wycombe on her own in the dark for an hour and a half, and diverted her to Banbury to get picked up by her Uncle Dan and Auntie Sophie. Of course the Banbury trains were delayed too and at one point I completely lost contact with her and started to panic that she would be stuck at Marylebone station all night!

We finally heard just after 6 o'clock that she had been picked up and was safe.

I feel like I've been running round in circles all day and am absolutely shattered.

I have no idea what we're going to do with her tomorrow - the flooding at the stations in the South West seems to have got worse and there's more heavy rain due tonight...

She's got an open day at the University of Westminter's Harrow campus (Sounds bloody posh!) tomorrow and then we'll have to get her a private jet to bring her home, I think. Or maybe a nice little flat in Westminster...