The Great Flood 2013....

Having just read the "The Great Flood 2013" report in the Courier I now fully realise just how lucky I've been in escaping any damage. If I lived in the town centre or by the river my home could have been ruined on Christmas Eve. If my shop had been South of the river instead of part way up a hill I could have spent all of Christmas day fishing for floating books and clearing up the mess! Thankfully none of this happened and I'm very grateful. There's no doubt that it has effected sales in the shop but I'm confident that we'll catch that up and anyway it seems so trivial to think like that when other shop keepers lives and livelihoods were at stake. It's heart warming to see that there was an army of volunteers helping with the clear up operation as pictured in the Courier. Wonderful stuff. The Dunkirk Spirit surfaces yet again. I've often looked at pictures of the 1968 floods in the local history books on sale in my shop and now pretty much everyone in Tonbridge will now know someone who has been effected in the Christmas Floods of 2013. Newspapers can be a bit prone to exaggeration but their headline this time seems very apt....