TerryVision

I know very little about Andy Warhol other than knowing that he was a prime mover in the world of pop art, he painted a picture of a tin of soup, and that he once said something about everyone having their fifteen minutes of fame, which, having not even bothered to look him up on Wikipedia is probably more than I know about Ladybirds for instance despite having met more of them than I have famous artists. None became good friends. Ladybirds are quite fickle and soon fly away when spooked and, like leopards, they never change their spots.

Where I’m getting to, albeit by the scenic route, is that most people have at some point had a brush with the bright lights of fame (or in some cases, notoriety). For most of us it can be quite a small and insignificant moment but for others it can be the start of a journey towards bona fide celebrity status. Our destiny is in the stars.

The most common route to fame and fortune these days is via the medium of television, however it can devour the unwary in its relentless demand for entertainment. I have had encounters with this cut-throat world on a few occasions.

Firstly, I appeared in the audience of a 1980s mid-morning talking shop called ‘The Time The Place’ along with some fellow associates of mine, when we were all about 14. The subject of the show was the perennial concern of ‘the youth of today’. Loads of kids from schools in the Southampton area were bussed in to defend ourselves to house bound and unemployed daytime television viewers across the country. Some actors from popular kids show ‘Grange Hill’ were also present, although in the flesh they appeared to be closer to middle age than their on-screen characters were.

I don’t remember much about this programme other than being intimidated by the seemingly giant pedestal cameras in use at the time and being sat in the wrong place at the end of the show as the host, the late Mike Scott, leant in to the camera to wish the great unwashed at home farewell, thereby positioning his backside about an inch away from my face. I must stress however that this was an unfortunate incident and Operation Yewtree do not need to be informed.

The second time I found myself in front of the lens was a year later whilst browsing in WHSmiths. I was approached by a camera crew and was asked to peruse the rack of Mills & Boon books, without any explanation. Being keen to please I did so, only to discover some days later that I was on the local news during their Valentines Day feature where a cheesy reporter was trying to demonstrate that even men read romantic fiction. Needless to say, I kept my head down at school for quite a while after that.

Then things went quiet for a few decades, until last Tuesday. I’d been in Manchester for work and had arrived at a chilly Oxford Road station to find that my train home was not going to arrive for another 30 minutes. As I was seeking somewhere warm to shelter I noticed a camera crew lurking about. Assuming that this was some sort of A-level media studies project (they looked so young) I paid them little attention and tried to keep out of their way.

Whilst trying to work out on my phone if there was some elaborate alternative route available to me that would mean I could board a nice warm train rather than catch my death on Northern Rail premises I was approached by one of the young fellows from the crew. He explained that they were recording a piece for The One Show, that smorgasbord of early evening celebrity chat, serious features about the likes of terminal illness, great historical moments, and the threat of terrorism to pensioners in Oldham, and lightweight pieces about dogs in hats.

On this occasion they were filming a feature following a mature gentleman called Geoff who was trying to seek new employment by handing out free coffees to commuters with his contact details on the cup.  Interested in the prospect of a free warming beverage I agreed to partake in this televisual opportunity. I pretended that Geoff and I had never met and that this was all a surprise. I then went on to tell Geoff in this fairy-tale world that I would be able to help him due to all the connections that I have within the business world.

To be honest, I do know people, some in quite senior and important jobs that help to keep the wheels of industry turning, but I’m not sure they want to be introduced to a chap who thinks that his best option for employment is to hand out coffee to random passers by on the off chance they might secure him a role as a non-executive director. Naturally I didn’t explain this to Geoff as I was cold and I wanted a coffee, which I have to say was disappointingly tepid, but that’s the artifice of television for you.

My moment in front of the camera over, I went on my way on the assumption that there were many more televisual commuters around and that this was the end of the matter. I tweeted that I’d met Geoff and used the hashtag from the coffee cup, #GiveGeoffaJob.

Fast forward a couple of days and as I was heading home from work my phone began vibrating furiously as earnest tweeters found my message and shared it with their followers. I reasoned that Geoff must have appeared on TV but that I’d sadly missed his moment.

The next morning however I got curious as to who had made the final cut so I downloaded it. Sure enough, in amongst the hapless punters on screen came a cheery soul in specs who was promising Geoff his unmitigated support on prime time television.

Assuming that as no-one I know watches The One Show I’d gotten away with it and so I went to work with no concerns. However, after being in the office about 30 seconds I quickly realised that my brief appearance had not gone unnoticed, mostly by startled colleagues who’d had their domestic situations disrupted when I showed up unexpectedly on their televisions, in high definition.

Others who wisely don’t watch The One Show (no-one ever owns up to being a regular viewer, as I discovered) have threatened to download it via the BBC iPlayer to see how I fared. Hopefully they, like TV producers across the land, will see my natural charm and charisma bursting through the screen and that the calls for future TV appearances will soon come my way.

I’m currently eyeing up the opportunity to replace Nick Hewar on the Apprentice. I think I can just about muster the wit to lurk behind some useless graduates and pull faces as they make unwise and downright stupid decisions whilst trying to sell fish or doughnuts to the people of Guildford.

In fact I may even set up my own hashtag, #GiveTerryaJobOnTheTelly. I’ll get myself down the local railway station and hand out coffees with it on, just in case I bump into a passing media mogul.

Spread the word and when fame comes calling you can say you were there at the beginning. You can say you made me who I am. Then you can slag me off to the papers.

Fame is a cruel mistress.  

Flat Out

I’ve just realised that the last time that I updated the virtual world with tales of the real world, I was sharing my anxiety of some forthcoming surgery. Following that post this blog fell silent, possibly leading the more optimistic of readers to assume that I had succumbed to my malaise and expired on the operating table. Well, from my perspective I can happily report that this was not the case, the operation went well and I am now fully recovered. However, it was not without the occasional mishap along the way.

I had ‘gone private’ thanks to a generous health scheme provided by my employer so my arrival at the hospital was all a bit of an adventure, albeit an adventure that started at 6.30am and would lead to me being cut open. The room I had been allocated was better than some hotel rooms I’d stayed in (the Days Inn near Victoria Station for a start) and I could tell that I was a long way from the National Health Service when the first thing I was handed was a gift set of toiletries. They then gave me a menu embossed in gold, which my father-in-law was particularly drawn towards when he visited.

I was also provided with a gown to pop on and told that I was up first at 8.30am, which was terrifying but also a relief at the same time. After some anxious pacing I was eventually escorted up to the operating theatre where I was ushered into a brightly lit room full of widescreen TVs. I suppose it hadn’t occurred to me that a modern operating theatre looks less like an abattoir and more like Mission Control. If I could have detached myself at that moment from the cold, hard reality that I was about to be operated upon I would have marvelled at the state of the art technology being applied just to remove my gall bladder.

My fear was that I would wake during the surgery but would be unable to move or scream, trapped in a world of pain with no way to tell my torturers that I was suffering. Rather peculiarly therefore I was determined to stay in control of my senses as the anaesthetist busied around me. However, after a few short moments of applying a mask to my face (a medical one, not one of those Guy Fawkes ones that seem popular amongst anarchists) I must have passed out.

The next thing that I was aware of was the LED clock on the wall stating that it was 10.30am. The surgeon loomed above my prone body and asked how I was feeling. In a disbelieving and a slightly slurred intonation I asked him if he’d performed the operation. He confirmed that my gall bladder and I had parted company and that they’d take me back down to my room later to enjoy all the comforts that private healthcare can offer.

In fact by the time I was wheeled back down to be reunited with the present Mrs Hayward, I was virtually sat up in the bed and singing numbers from popular West End musicals.  I felt great, absolutely splendid, on top of the world. I laughed with the surgeon when he came to visit and even asked if I could have my gall stones to take home with me. He explained that this was not considered hygienic these days and, even if I wanted to take them home and fashion them into a necklace, my gall stones had been stuck together. The operation had therefore been trickier than anticipated and he’d had to make a longer cut near my belly button. “Really?”, I enquired, “that’s just typical of me, isn’t it?” and we laughed like old friends enjoying a joke over an ale or two, albeit that I was still laughing for some 20 minutes after he’d left the room.  

My overall bonhomie extended to everyone I met that afternoon and I felt an overwhelming love for the present Mrs Hayward in particular and I spent several minutes just staring at her lovingly in a glorious haze of adoring feelings.

Now this is not to denigrate my feelings for my wife or for my fellow men and women but unbeknown to me this joy and laughter was being fuelled by a concoction of pain killers which included, but was not limited to, Tramadol. 

This elation continued unabated for a few hours before wearing off a little. It was replaced by discomfort and waves of nausea. Needless to say I was not able to partake of the fine meals being presented to me at regular intervals. My heart, or in this case my stomach, just wasn’t in it.

By the evening I began to perk up again. I picked at some chicken and rice concoction that had arrived, but found more pleasure to be gained from drinking the custard surrounding a sticky toffee pudding.  The food looked so splendid that I felt bad about leaving it but my insides had been altered and weren’t completely ready for anything of substance. After a long day observing my various states of health the present Mrs Hayward headed home and I decided that I would chill out in front of ‘Strictly Come Dancing’ on the impossibly large TV in the room and perhaps even have a bit of a doze.

By about 8.30pm the sequins and twirling had ended and I idly flicked through the channels, finally alighting upon an episode of ‘Dad’s Army’. Whilst sleepily regarding the hilarious antics of the Home Guard from Warmington-on-Sea I suddenly got prompted into movement by a familiar and unwelcome sensation from my stomach.

I’d been urged by the nurses to get out of bed when I could and I felt that this was probably one of those moments. I delicately pulled myself off the bed and over to the bathroom as another bout of sickness seemed inevitable. When I realised that, instead of being stood by the sink and staring at my pale face in the mirror, I was actually lying flat on my back staring at the ceiling I realised that something had gone awry.

I had somehow fallen backwards but I had no memory of doing so. I was just there. After a few moments of enjoying a cool draught on the back of my head I looked around me. My body was laid about two-thirds of the way into the bathroom with my head and shoulders still within the bedroom. Fortunately it didn’t appear that I’d struck anything on the way down but the little bag that was attached to me by a tube into the side of my abdomen to capture any nasty seepage had come away and was now some distance away from me. There was blood, but not too much.

I couldn’t seem to move so laid prone for a while before finding I could sort of get up on my elbows, and so I tried to drag my weakened carcass back to the bed, with only minimal success. At that moment a young lady arrived with a mug of Horlicks. She seemed surprised to see me on the floor and decided that it was probably an opportune moment to seek some assistance from someone who was medically trained. I was not in a position to argue.

Within moments my room was full of nurses and doctors. A tall gentleman appeared and hauled me up from the floor and back on to the bed. The bag was reattached and they left me alone, but I was now subject to regular blood pressure checks as mine had apparently gone through the roof for no discernible reason.

My sleep was not entirely satisfying that night. I couldn’t get comfortable, especially as I could only really lie on my back, and I was being visited every couple of hours for medical tests of one form or another. The hours passed slowly and I was therefore glad to see the sunlight start to emerge from the cover of darkness.

At around 8am I was visited by a chirpy lady with some breakfast and tea. I sat myself up and was ready to tuck into the Corn Flakes she had brought when I became aware of some dampness on the right hand side of my tummy. I cautiously investigated and found I was leaking a little blood out of one of my wounds near the bag. No matter I thought, I’ll ping the bell in a minute after I’ve had myself a welcome cup of tea. As I was pouring and the reassuring smell of English Breakfast tea hit my nostrils I realised that the dampness had now spread. I looked again and was slightly startled to find that I was now sat in a substantial puddle of my own blood. I decided that help may be needed.

I rang the bell and after a few minutes the nurse, a charming young lady called Laura, arrived and calmly investigated. Again, much like the night before, my room was soon filled with what seemed like the entire medical staff from the hospital as they tried in vain to staunch the flow. I heard mutterings of ‘blood transfusion’ but I remained calm as towels from the bathroom were being deployed.

Eventually the Consultant was called in to investigate the blood bath. He surmised that my fall had caused the bag’s tube to pierce a blood vessel. He said that this was probably just skin blood that had been forming overnight and, instead of staunching it, the blood should be encouraged to flow forth. He pressed on my wound and the blood poured from my side like a raging red river.

Once he was satisfied that as much blood that was going to emerge had emerged he sewed me back up, but told me that my abdomen would now swell up and that I will most likely have a fair bit of bruising. There was however a veiled threat that if things didn’t go as he expected that more surgery would be necessary so for the rest of the Sunday I was nil by mouth and I wouldn’t be going home as expected.

For the next 36 hours I was poked, prodded, stabbed and generally manhandled, mostly by a German fellow calling himself ‘Doctor Bob’ who I wasn’t convinced had any kind of medical training whatsoever, until they eventually released me back into the wild on the Monday evening. My stomach and right hip did indeed swell up to the point that the only clothes I had that fitted me were my pyjamas, which I lived in for about a week. The bruising was spectacular and featured more colours than the famous sands of Alum Bay on the Isle of Wight.

For the following few weeks I found that I could only sleep on my back, which is surprisingly uncomfortable for prolonged periods, and my mobility was much reduced. A kindly soul had lent me some DVDs to watch during my convalescence. They comprised mostly of the Alien films. Given the gore I had recently experienced I figured they would be an easy watch. The only problem I had was that our DVD player is on the bottom shelf of the TV unit and I couldn’t get to it. More to the point, if I’d had to get down on the floor to load the DVD I would have had to stay there for the rest of the day and that would not be a satisfactory way to view any classic movie.

I was however on hand to receive Christmas presents that the present Mrs Hayward had ordered, even if it took me 10 minutes to walk the short distance to the door. Throughout my recovery I frequently answered the door to our chatty Mancunian postman, although I did have to explain my appearance in pyjamas at all times of the day lest he thought I was some work shy fop who ordered parcels in a woman’s name. Following this explanation he enquired about my health on a daily basis, once to a puzzled Mrs Hayward who hadn’t realised that we’d struck up this level of camaraderie whilst she was at work.

My recovery is now complete and all is well. I am eating and drinking normally with no ill effects. My scars are minimal and if anyone asks (not that a lot of people have to witness my bare torso) I am ready with a story of how I battled a man eating shark and won.

“You think this is bad?” I tell them, “You should have seen the shark”.

 

Under the Knife

The present Mrs Hayward would have it that my frequent trips to see my GP would imply that I’m a raging hypochondriac. This isn’t entirely true, however having a healthy regard for any signs of malaise does set me apart from the stoicism of some men who would prefer to wait until their leg drops off before looking to see if they have a plaster.

I, on the other hand, assume that every ache, pain, cough or sneeze is a sign that the Grim Reaper is about to point his bony finger in my direction and so I get myself off down the quacks' to make good use of my national insurance contributions. Combined with some medical insurance at work, which means I occasionally bypass the National Health Service to attend hospitals with bowls of fruit in reception, means that my health needs are well catered for.

The combination of all these kindly medical providers came in very useful a couple of months ago when I was struck down in the middle of the night with what I concluded must surely be a heart attack of some kind.

To make sure of this self-diagnosis I got up, paced about to distract myself from the abominable pain, and held on for about an hour to see if I died or not. When the hour was up and I found myself to still be residing in the land of the living I rang 111. They concurred that my symptoms were a trifle odd and decided to send a paramedic to me, which sent me into a further paroxysm of panic. I had assumed they’d just tell me to take an aspirin and stop bothering them but within minutes a paramedic was in our lounge and had wired me up to some beeping machinery.

His results were inconclusive but he seemed fascinated by my slow heartbeat, despite my assurances that this was a natural phenomenon which had been commented on before by medical professionals and had been put down to my obvious athletic prowess.

He decided that I should be taken to the Accident & Emergency department for further tests and so he packed me into an ambulance car, whilst I apologised profusely for wasting his time with what was probably only a bad bout of indigestion, and driven at speed to Peterborough with the present Mrs Hayward trying to keep pace behind us in her little Fiat 500.

At the hospital I was prodded, poked, stabbed, scanned and mauled until they decided I wasn’t about to expire, despite the heart machine suggesting that I was flat lining on more than one occasion, and came to the unexpected conclusion that I was suffering from gall stones. Until that point I had no idea what a gall stone was.

In short (and from memory) they can be found, perhaps unsurprisingly, within the gall bladder. The gall bladder is an organ attached to your liver that stores the bile that secretes from the liver which is then released and helps to aid digestion when you eat. Sometimes, if the bile hangs around too long the cholesterol within the bile crystallises into jagged stones. Most of the time these stones cause no problems but if they move or create an infection they generate a remarkable amount of pain and, if they get stuck in a tube somewhere, they can kill you. See, I told you I was ill.

I came within a cat’s whisker of having the gall bladder whipped out there and then but the Doctor overseeing my general wellbeing refrained on this occasion and sent me home with a good dose of morphine and some pain killers that could fell a horse.

The pain failed to subside for a couple of weeks and after further prodding and scanning I found myself in front of a surgeon who suggested that, given the problems I’d had that it was time that my gall bladder and I had an amicable separation.

He assured me that once recovered from surgery I would be able to live a perfectly normal life, no strange tics or funny walks, and my diet, which since ‘the incident’ had mostly consisted of water, lettuce and dust, could also return to ‘business as usual’ with the usual caveat of ‘everything in moderation’.

He explained that the gall bladder is a useless part of our anatomy and, like the appendix and most of our intestines, are products of a bygone age when food was scarce, fire was a distant dream, men hunted mammoths with spears and Bruce Forsyth was still in short trousers. In essence, he was telling me that I had not evolved since the age of the cavemen which is fair enough I think. Just don’t expect me to wrestle a sabre-toothed tiger to the ground or fashion rudimentary tools out of flint any time soon.

So, this Saturday, I will be heading to a hospital to bid farewell to my gall bladder and its resident stones. I am being upgraded to a 21st century body, more efficient and slightly lighter. I don’t necessarily recommend this route as an alternative to conventional weight loss but when life gives you lemons and all that.

Frankly I’m terrified of actual surgery and a night in a hospital is going to be a new experience for me. I’m hoping it’s going to be like ‘Only When I Laugh’ or ‘Carry on Doctor’ and if it isn’t I will be sorely disappointed. Well, I’ll certainly be sore, regardless of the whole affair.

I have however prepared by buying some old fashioned pyjamas that button up at the front and am developing my Sid James-style earthy laugh for whenever a nurse bends over or a Doctor inadvertently puts his foot in a bed pan. Wish me luck.

Ooooh, Matron!

The Middle Ages

Turning 40 a couple of months ago was a life changing moment. It’s not a big deal for most people, and I had the good fortune to see how many of my friends who shared the birth year of 1974 were handling it. For most it seemed to have passed off without incident, some made plaintive ‘where’s the time gone?’ messages on social media, and some seemed to be in the throes of a full-on mid-life crisis. My reaction was somewhere in the middle of the latter two.

In essence I realise now that I was passing through the stages of the Kubler-Ross model, otherwise known as the ‘five stages of grief’. The stages are (in this order) denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.

To be fair, I was in denial for an impossibly long time. Friends and associates joked about my forthcoming birthday for a good few months beforehand and I, on the face of it laughed it off. After all, it was just a joke, I couldn’t really be 40 could I? I still feel about, oh what, 21 on a good day? 24 maybe, at an absolute push. My looks have barely changed. Yes, there’s the odd grey hair and my skin isn’t quite as youthful as it once was, but essentially I’m still as fresh as a daisy aren’t I?

This abject inability to be stoic and accepting in the face of incontrovertible evidence was challenged to the maximum a few days before my birthday when some work colleagues decided, as it was the last day we’d all be in the office before I descended into my fifth decade, to decorate my desk and other locations in the building with ‘Happy 40^th Birthday’ style messages, balloons, photos off Facebook, etc. You get the picture.

To say I suffered a sudden sense of humour failure would be an understatement. This is where I shifted from denial to anger.

I was appalled and horrified. To put it bluntly, and I did in a loud voice as I entered the office, “I’m thirty-fucking-nine!!!!”. I couldn’t believe that my image was everywhere declaring to the world that I am old, old enough to be the father, nay the grandfather (if I were a guest on the ‘Jeremy Kyle Show’) of most people I worked with and therefore past it, not worth bothering about, unattractive and virtually dead. As you can guess, I wasn’t thinking in a particularly rational manner at the time.

This of course didn’t stop people wishing me premature birthday greetings for the entire day. After about an hour or so my seething resentment towards the perpetrators subsided a little and rather than hoping that they would all drop into a localised sink hole as penance for their mockery I began to accept this situation with better grace than when I first arrived. To be fair, no-one meant any harm and we all went out for lunch and there was a birthday cake and gifts and, well, even I could see that I was being unnecessarily churlish in the face of such unbridled kindness and bonhomie.  

To be fair, this was as far as the anger went as the rest of the world was allowing me to be thirty-nine right up to the last minute and, for some reason, that seemed to be incredibly important.

After anger comes bargaining. When people are facing a premature end to their existence they plead with their chosen God for a few more years in exchange for living a reformed life. For me, this meant that I needed to review and re-assess my life so far with the help of an appropriate icon from my belief system. So I went for a pint.

From this discussion with, admittedly, several pints of ale I drew up what is commonly referred to as a ‘bucket list’. As this implies impending death I chose to label mine as a ‘things to do’ list, which is so much less threatening. It turned out to be more of a challenge than I had first thought as I opted initially to keep my list of things achievable. I reasoned that there was really no point in creating any more unfulfilled ambitions than I already had as that way madness and a return to anger lies.

Firstly I began to think of places I’d never been to. For no good reason my first thought was, ‘Well, I’ve never been to Oxford’, so it went on the list. It wasn’t however an illustrious start and before I found myself drawing up a list of various locations around the UK that I had neither visited nor ever wanted to visit I moved on to think of things I’d never done and would like to do. The list has now grown and evolved and includes very achievable things like lighting one of those floating lantern things to visiting Finland.

The depression part of the Kubler-Ross model never really kicked in, other than bemoaning the fact that some of the things on the list may prove to be incredibly costly, so ‘win the EuroMillions’ was added. I’m not sure if it is a legitimate addition but what the hell.

This makes me realise that I have now reached acceptance. I’m 40, I have plans, and no matter how wild or how mundane they may appear to be to the outside world I will strive to tick them off before I fall off my perch. This is assuming that I don’t fall from the said perch anytime soon. Well I could be run over by a bus tomorrow, although probably not where I live given the infrequency of the service.

Enough of this pessimism, after all, the only way is Finland.

Or Iceland.

Or the United States.

Or Oxford.

Welcome to Venice, Lincolnshire

Turning on my TV this morning I was greeted with the usual early morning diet of news and features but, try as I might, I couldn’t find a single network that was reporting on the major news story of the previous day: The Great Bourne Flood.

It’s almost as if this remote backwater of South Lincolnshire had been rendered invisible to the news gatherers in that there London. They were more interested in dramatic pictures of The Shard being struck by lightning than some soggy yokels up to their knees in water, for shame.

Yesterday started warm and sunny, I was working from home but keeping a keen eye on the weather. Having recently laid fresh grass seed in the garden to deal with some threadbare patches and noticing how little green shoots of recovery were pushing their way up from the ground, I ensured that they were being kept fresh and watered. What better though than actual rain water to turn my sparse lawn into a lustrous green tableau of wonder?

As the afternoon progressed the dark clouds rolled in and I opened a window near where I was working so that I could hear the life-giving pitter-patter of gentle raindrops. I perhaps should have taken heed that all may not be well when the forthcoming shower was heralded by a blinding flash of lightning and an almighty clap of thunder so loud that I feared that the very fabric of reality had split asunder, releasing all manner of hellish demons and mischievous sprites upon the world.

The rain quickly arrived, falling hard and fast. Then it turned up a notch and came down even harder and even faster. The rain god looked down upon this small town and was dissatisfied. He stared hard at all the options available to him to up the ante with this deluge and decided to smash his fist down on all of the buttons at once just to see what would happen.

What happened was an impossibly deafening increase in precipitation with a healthy and prolonged burst of hailstones, just for good measure. This kept going for about an hour without much letting up.

I wasn’t concerned; it was just a heavy shower, nothing to worry about. I looked out of the rear window behind where I was working. The garden was getting a little moist and the paved alleyway where the bins are kept was starting to gain large puddles but nothing out of the ordinary.

I continued to work and had just come off the phone to a particularly unhelpful individual at a well-known healthcare provider when I heard a dripping sound from nearby. I closed the window but it didn’t help. There was still a sound of invading water coming from somewhere nearby.

I quickly ascertained that it was originating from my right hand side just behind a shelving unit full of DVDs. With a bit of puffing, panting and swearing I moved the unit to one side to see a damp patch on the carpet. I followed the trail of the dripping water up to a cupboard attached to the wall. I opened the cupboard and, sure enough, from somewhere within this cupboard the offending rainwater was emanating. The only problem was that this particular cupboard was housing the fuse box and electricity meter.

I am, as I have observed previously, not a practical man in any sense. I looked at the bewildering array of switches and dials in desperation. My eyes were drawn to the biggest of the switches, helpfully coloured red. I couldn’t see what the label underneath read as time had faded it, but I figured that it would either turn everything off or be the ‘self-destruct’ switch. With considerable trepidation I reached in to the cupboard and, whilst making my peace with the world, I flicked it downwards.

Thankfully this seemed to do the trick as I found myself still alive and in a strange half-light in a silent house, apart of course from the incessant drumming of the rain. Electrocution avoided I deployed all manner of buckets, cloths and tea towels into the affected area.

Catastrophe averted I looked out of the window, only to see that whilst I’d been distracted the puddles outside were now a raging stream. Not only had the gutters given up, the drains had become redundant. I found some wellies and splashed outside to see if I could assist the drains by clearing them a little. This only had a very mild effect as more rain was falling from the heavens than being swept away by the drainage system, even with my assistance.

I looked at my grass and realised that I could only see half of it, the rest was underneath a newly formed swamp, replete with a frog hopping merrily amongst it. I retreated indoors, threw more towels at the dripping fuse box cupboard and stared miserably out of the window, wishing I’d been one of those people who’d won a speedboat on ‘Bullseye’ back in the 80s. ‘Now they’re laughing’, I thought.

After what seemed to be an interminable age the rain decreased a little and, whilst on the phone to a colleague, I looked out of the rear bedroom window to see that the road behind our house had turned into an actual river. In amongst this river was a fire engine with some sturdy firemen up to their knees in murky brown water trying to establish how they were going to fight the elements.

Funnily enough I nearly had need of firemen at lunchtime when I came close to setting fire to the kitchen whilst grilling some sausages. I reasoned that having suffered fire and flood I only had plague and pestilence to go therefore I may as well venture outside for a closer look.

The one thing that draws human beings together is a bit of a drama on your doorstep. In about half an hour I met and chatted to neighbours that I only knew as nodding acquaintances or had never seen before yesterday afternoon. Everyone had a tale to tell; where else there were floods, which roads were blocked, how they remember when this happened 20 years ago.

I, along with one of my neighbours, went wading into the water to see how deep it was, just like those reporters on the news. I then did what everyone does these days, took a photo and posted it on to Facebook.

Today is another day, which it would be really. The water has been pumped away. Upon calmer investigation I discovered that thankfully the incoming water had missed penetrating the fuse box by millimetres although still too close for comfort, and my garden is now less swampy and full of pond life. My newly sown grass is probably doomed but at least I didn’t live down the road behind ours as that floodwater came perilously close to turning up as an unwelcome house guest for some.

Yet still no contact from any reporters from the BBC, ITN, Sky News, CNN, Fox News, France 24, Al-Jazeera, or any of the other news organisations I can remember that sit within the 500s on my Sky box. All they want to talk about is UKIP or Russia which is most disappointing.

There’s a story right here folks, just waiting to be told, which will now fall into Bourne folklore.

“Those floods of 2014, I remember them well. The water was so high they had to send a Cross Channel ferry to rescue us, oh yes”.