David Morris – brassedoff.net

Somewhere in the Bible, there’s something about the flood waters subsiding on the 40th day. I don’t think our flood is of Biblical proportions, but it’s caused quite a bit of local disruption. I had a little trip out earlier today to see what the damage looked like. (I should also say at this point that I’m experimenting with a new photo gallery plugin). Some of the images are from around Killamarsh. Some are when I went out for a trip around the local area so feature Beighton and Woodhouse.

Click on the image (left) to open up the photo gallery.

I’ve just turned down the chance to give an interview on Radio 5. To be honest, 1am is a little outside my comfort zone. The office floor is damned uncomfortable, but I really do hope to be asleep by then… if the helicopters have gone to sleep.

The council traffic cameras in Sheffield are normally a good source of information when the weather’s bad. Unfortunately, Urban Traffic Control is in one of the worst-hit areas at Attercliffe. The cameras went down at just after 6pm. It’s easy to see why…

Stuck at work with no realistic prospect of going home tonight because of the severe flooding that’s hit Sheffield, so I thought I’d blog some of the photos grabbed on my mobile, just for the record…

The Don burst its banks in the Lower Don Valley mid afternnon today and it’s been getting worse since. Now at 19:10, it’s stopped raining, but the flood water is still rising, for how long I know not.

This is the shot of Saville Street just outside Sheffield. The water is a raging torrent. You can probably make out the waves up against the backs of the street furniture. This is from the back corner of our works.

The Pentagon / Hartwell car dealers. It’s this bad here. I dread to think what it’s like further down Attercliffe. There may be some cheap Porsches and Mercedes going in a few days…

Presidents Way at 18:30. Pity the poor devil who owns the Astra.

I tried to get home around 15:30 today but gave up and went back to work. Consequently, my car is still dry. Some of the guys who left around the same time persevered for a while before being told by the Police to abandon their cars on Savile Street. They waded back through knee-deep water. There’s all sorts of crud floating around in the water. Shoes, medical syringes, plastic roadworks barriers… One of our works managers dived in to the water to rescue one guy who tried to cross the torrent and got swept away. Someone’s been killed nearby. It’s a disaster area.

You probably can just make out a blur about the cabin to the left of the red bridge support. It’s a Sea King helicopter winching people to safety from the roof of a building in danger of collapse.

Sheffield is currently gridlocked.

I’m now going to make a cup of tea and have a biccie before the power goes off.

Today was the second day of Retford Museum weekend. Don’t ask me about Retford Museum Weekend. I live just outside Sheffield, 20 miles from Retford, but Retford is where the Seth Ellis is, and I was rostered on the trip boat for today, so Retford it was. In the rain.

Pete had rung me up on the Saturday saying “don’t get there before noon”. It had been quiet on Saturday, and it seemed a bit pointless being there at 10. So, noon it was. In the rain.

Did I mention it rained?

I passed on the first trip with around six members of the public on, opting to go to the Bay Tree cafe for a danish and a double espresso. When they were bringing the boat back into the basin, they’d felt something under the boat. Later investigation showed it to be an Asda supermarket trolley. The sort with the locking wheels designed not to be taken from the store.

Well, after a couple of trips, to do our bit for the canal community, we got the grapple hook from the boat and myself, Pete Whitehead and Keith Moore decided to go fishing. I’ll freely admit, it’s the biggest treble I’ve ever been fishing with.

The canal had been crystal clear all afternoon enabling location and identification of said trolley. Typically, when we go to try and get it out, it’s muddy as buggery. We thought we knew roughly where the offending article was though, so had a cast in.

First time! We hit on something big. It put up a fight, but the three of us were equal to it.

A “men at work” sign. The portable triangular metal ones used for short term road works.

Well, you can’t throw it back once it’s out, so put it on the bank and have another go.

A couple of blanks, then we were in again.

This time, a 4m length of scaffolding pole.

Perhaps the trolley had sum off?

Final cast, and we hit it. It put up a fight but between the three of us, we brought it under control and landed it.

It was a nice shiny new trolley as well, so had only been in there a short while.

If you see a trolley behind the Bay Tree cafe, you know where it came from. Better there than wrapped around the prop of some poor boaters’ pride and joy.

Tonight, one of the beta testers for Juppy managed to submit 10 images to Geograph in 83 seconds using Juppy. Not bad going really. The next job is to produce a proper release announcement and download page for JUppy prior to a formal release.

To say  I’m chuffed would be an understatement.

When I wrote this last week, I did say I’d be following up with Stagecoach to find out what they’d done about the yoof driving the Number 52 that evening.

I spoke to Geoff Davison, the supervisor today and he’s explained what has been done.

Apparently, yon driver had been pushed over by a car turning at the junction at the top of Handsworth and rather than hit the car, he had got rather too close to me instead. It’s been pointed out to him that he should in fact have stopped. Geoff apologised for the conduct of the driver, blaming relative inexperience and said that his conduct was out of order. A course in Driving School had either taken place or was planned.

The depot have apparently written to me (I should receive the letter today?) explaining their actions and pointing out that they have a fairly high profile cycle awareness scheme in their depot. Now, I know that they have done something like this in the past because their buses used to have large “make room for cyclists” banners on the back.

Hopefully, my one-cyclist campaign has scored a result. I’ll know if the driver ever comes aross me again and gives me a bit more room next time.

For the time being, this issue is closed having been, in my opinion, suitably dealt with by the depot management.

Thanks, Stagecoach.

Edit: The letter was waiting for me when I got home from work…

It’s been several months now since the breach closed the canal at Chesterfield. The picture left was taken this afternoon on my way back from Chatsworth – I stopped for a quick shufty. (This picture is taken from Tapton Lock).

You can clearly see on the right bank where the water level should be; look for the different colour of vegetation. Gordon’s been up here a couple of times and photographed it as well.

The problem after this length of time is that the clay (puddle) lining of the canal will be drying out where it’s exposed to the air, and as it dries it cracks. Cracks don’t hold the water in. This breach is costing the canal trust dear as well in terms of lost revenue from the John Varley trip boat. The trust web site reckons the breach may be fixed by the end of July. Let’s keep our fingers crossed eh?

We’ve got a trip boat crew meeting on Wednesday. I should get an update then on what’s happening with respect to the repairs.

We’ve got rain. In spades.

(snapped from Sheffield Council’s traffic monitoring cameras)

Over the past couple of evenings, JUppy, the Geograph project bulk uploader has gone through two revisions (for revisions read ’rounds of bug fixes’).

It’s also out in the wild although not linked in from anywhere. JUppy has the potential to reach the widest audience of any bit of software I’ve ever written, and I’m not being paid a penny for it. Am I bothered about that? No. In fact, I’m quite proud of it. I believe in the benefits of the open source movement and it’s been nice to be able to find a project that I can make a valid contribution to as well as learn something at the same time.

I’m not sure what I do after JUppy. It will, I presume, continue to be a work in progress, but once the core is stable and all the main features are in there, I daresay I will brush off my limited php skills and delve into the guts of the project again.