I’m not quite sure which end to start with, on this one.

Yesterday we had a flood. It came down through the dining room ceiling. Lots and lots of water, from various points. I went haring upstairs as soon as I discovered it, of course, and found an incompetent grandmother and a small child who had just finished – they thought! – mopping up a flood in their bathroom, caused by leaving a tap running and the plughole blocked while they went out for a walk.

When our downpour hadn’t diminished after a few more minutes, I went haring back up again and lifted their bathroom linoleum with my own hands. There was some water underneath, but not much. Nothing to do but wait it out. My husband kept telling me to make them turn it off at the mains, but that wouldn’t have helped. a) The grandmother didn’t know how to do that and b) the water had already escaped and was lying there under their floorboards, above our ceiling.

It fell hard for perhaps ¾ of an hour, then tapered off. The ceiling has stayed up, although a strip of its paper has fallen. But presumably it’ll have to be replastered after suffering a deluge like that. There is damage to furniture, pictures, and books, although it doesn’t seem quite as bad this morning as feared last night. I’ll start phoning insurers soon.

We alerted our nice neighbours downstairs, for fear water would find its way on down to them. They came up and helped for a while.

So what is the other end of this story, where I might have started?

Very devoted readers might remember that something like this happened – when? Three years ago, perhaps. That time there was a torrential fall in our subsidiary lavatory, from their subsidiary lavatory. Their household was in a disturbed state because they had just had a baby named Alexander who was in a critical condition in hospital. He died a few weeks later.

Well, they’ve just had another. A girl, six weeks premature and with Down’s Syndrome. She’s in hospital (hence the grandmother) but doing well. When her father eventually got home and came to view the scene, he seemed cheerful and optimistic about his daughter. Helen and David’s eldest son Oliver, who died at 6 ½ weeks, also had Downs. Will this baby turn out to be named Rachel or Helen, when I get around to asking?

If one is forced to look on the bright side, it was just as well it happened yesterday and not next Sunday, when we hope to be away. And there was no yarn in the room.

Knitting

You won’t be surprised to hear that I ordered some more Zauberballs, although in fact I did it before disaster struck. I was quite wrong to say yesterday that they aren’t widely available in the UK. I ordered from my new friend Meadow Yarn. The difference between Crazy Zauberball and not-crazy, I learned, is that the former has two differently-coloured strands plyed together part of the time.

Time to stop. No luck with Royal Mail – it gets through to the verification screen, and then says “Payment unsuccessful. Please try again.” Mary Lou, I want to say more about the Dutch heel.