Friend Peter's struggle with severe flooding in England

My "mate," Peter Bryenton and his Partner Jane, live in the small village of Birlingame, Worcester, England. Over the past several days, the waters of all rivers in central England have flooded and produced devastation, the likes of which haven't been seen in generations. Peter maintains communications and here is his letter to me today:

Thank you for your thoughts and prayers, Curt. Be assured we are both safe.

Jane and I manage the risks we take, making carefully considered choices. We are warm, well fed, dry and have clean drinking water with electrical power. We have plenty of dry provisions and tinned goods, with a multi-fuel stove on which we can cook, and an oil lamp for the power cuts.

We are reaping the fruits of successive governments under-investing in our national infrastructure since 1947. Thatcher's privatisation of the public transport and utilities was a death blow to the warp and weft of our social fabric. Blair spent five billion pounds on a pointless war in a far away place, but not even one tenth of that amount will go to renew our Victorian sewers and storm drains, in spite of massive house building programs over the decades. Our fields have been made ever larger, for more profitable yields, but the hedges and ditches which have traditionally drained England's agricultural systems for centuries have been filled in, against all the advice of those who know better. We put up new homes on flood plains, but do not construct adequate defences, if any. All of our leading civil engineers are now saying "We told you so, but you wouldn't heed us". They were right in their prophecies.

Well, there are one hundred and fifty thousand domestic dwellings without power and water only ten miles from us, in Tewkesbury, where the rivers Severn and Avon meet. Jane and I have driven out to survey the countryside this evening, in deceptively cruel sunshine, but some of the roads are still under deep water, where the usually tiny brooks are still swollen. Abandoned cars litter the roadsides, reduced to scrap value in a moment by their inexperienced drivers, have either been dragged or shoved out of the way by tractors and lorries. These oversize 4WD (SUV) vehicles are merely fashion items, and not at all the off-road dream machines peddled by the marketing people. This is a tiny country, with narrow lanes. I have no idea why ordinary people feel the need to drive a 4.5 litre Jeep or Chrysler. You would need a military spec snorkel system with waterproof electronics to survive this lot, plus plenty of common sense, training and some sound mechanical aptitude. It's about greed.

The disaster has polarised citizens. We now have two distinct classes: the selfish and the selfless.

Cheers,

B.

Peter Bryenton
www.brypix.com

A letter I sent today to a fellow myasthenic who characterized herself as "ill."

I have MG and it has been so severe at times that I couldn't walk, talk or eat. I almost died from it last year. What I have is a simple (though buried under some very complex biochemistry) electrochemical disorder - as do we all who suffer from MG. Not for one moment, though, have I ever considered myself "ill." Ill is where someone needs to stay at home in bed or be in the hospital.

My symptoms have been far worse than a great many of the people in the forum (an English on-line forum for MG victims) and I still don't consider myself "ill," and never wiil (at least not with MG). The condition has not caused me time off from work from my stressful job, even when I couldn't talk (I used e-mail for communication). When I couldn't eat, I drank protein shakes (and lost 50 pounds from malnourishment). And, when I couldn't walk, I took a bus.

I'll I'm not.

Regards and best wishes for the future!

Curt

Church on the hill - Weston

Old Homestead and carriage barn - Weston

Looking up the road to Landgrove - Weston

"A river runs through it" - Weston

New-to-me 2004 Harley-Davidson XL883C - Sportster, on the showroom floor. 6,700 miles on its gorgeous chrome clock. The bike is beautiful and in mint condition. It has all the farkles on it I wanted on one of these and it save thousand$ over new.