h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It's just approaching 7pm here, 1am in the UK, and along the east coast they're coping with what's said to be the worst North Sea storm surge since the awful floods of 1953. I have friends in Lowestoft and Colchester so it's of more than a passing interest to me, especially since the road my Lowestoft friends live on is only a few hundred yards from the beach.

So I've been streaming BBC Radio Suffolk, getting the special coverage, listening to what's happening there, and it seems like they're probably okay, especially as it's a pretty good climb up from the beach to where they are.

There have been a lot of people calling the station, telling their stories, sometimes from their home and sometimes from a community centre or a sports centre that's been opened up as a shelter. Given the circumstances, everyone seems to be coping well, and in good spirits. People are helping each other.

It looks like high tide has come and gone for Suffolk and the surge is moving further south so I've moved from Radio Suffolk to Radio Essex. The first call I heard was from Carl in Jaywick (who really sounded like was from Essex), where I think I read that the entire town had been evacuated earlier today. Carl was sitting in his car with his two dogs, while his family were inside the shelter he was parked outside of. Apparently they wouldn't let the dogs inside. He signed off with the news that one of his dogs had must be getting a bit nervous because it had just let one go, so he was putting off lighting his next fag

But I must add that Essex redeemed itself immediately with a call from a woman from West Mersea, a place I know very well, who sounded much more old school Essex and who was a little more restrained about her pets' digestive tracts. She was far more interesting, and must have been a young child during the 1953 floods because she regaled us with stories of her grandfather sitting in his kitchen with the window open and pushing a boat away.

It sounds like it's getting pretty bad around Southend and Leigh, with another 20-30 minutes before they get their high tide.

Oh dear. Poor Jill in West Mersea has been inundated

My friend lives in Jaywick, and her hubby is a lorry driver and happened to be in Lowestoft. I texted her to make sure everything was okay, and she had no idea what was going on! She wouldn't evacuate (she has three dogs), but is just one street out of the zone. Her mother is right in it and felt going upstairs was preferable to evacuating. I wll never understand some people.

I've just put the news on (5am) but of course the news that Mandela died is apparently more important than our British news so there's nothing about the weather, which is current, while he will still be dead tomorrow.

Okay, he was an important figure in 20th century history and people like him don't come along too often, but that's not a reason to clear the schedules of *everything* else when something as potentially life-threatening as one of the worst weather events of the last 50 years is happening. They've already run out of things to say about him and people to talk to, and they're rehashing the same stuff, playing the same clips.

Meanwhile, in towns down the east coast... who knows? Perhaps nothing happened. That'd be good for the people who live there.

I think it was actually a special programme on the news channel, because after 6am it was just an 'item' and we got lots of weather. So that's all okay now. I should stop getting up before 6.

No-one should have to get up before 6am, unless they really, really want to. Or, like me, they sometimes just wake up and can't get back to sleep again

As for the coverage though, I tuned in (tuned in... on a computer ) to Radio 4 at about 9.55pm to catch the ten o'clock news, at which time the last five minutes of In Our Time should have been on. I guess they must have cut to the World Service, although I didn't realise that at the time, and I heard them talking about Nelson Mandela. A quick look at the BBC news front page confirmed that he'd died.

So I kept listening. Ten o'clock came around, and obviously it was the main story. 10.15 they were still on it, at 10.30 still no mention of anything else, and as it started getting close to 10.45 and the time Book at Bedtime begins, I started wondering how they were going to fit in any decent coverage of the floods.

Then they mentioned that Book at Bedtime would be broadcast at another time. Okay, I thought, perhaps they'll use those 15 minutes to cover other stories, such as this major event that's happening right now and impacting the lives of thousands of people, right now. That's, right now.

That didn't happen. At 11pm they said that Radio 4 is now joining the World Service, and that was it. No news about the storm surge and the floods. I don't think it's right to sweep everything else aside that way, in the circumstances.

Nelson Mandela's name will never be forgotten. There aren't many people who can be said to have almost single-handedly changed the course of an entire country, and in doing so released so many people from an oppressive regime and given them freedoms they'd never had before. Remember that scene towards the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark where Belloq and the Nazis are taking to the ark to the place where they're going to open it and Indiana Jones is following them on the cliffs above? At one point Belloq shouts up to Jones something like "You and I are only passing through history, but the ark *is* history".

Nelson Mandela didn't just pass through history, he *is* history and he made history.

The only way I could find out about it, last night, was lookign on twitter; My Dad lives a bit inland, from Lowestoft, In Oulton Broad.
At some point, Lowestoft/Oulton broad, was properly* an island; the two bridges, one in Lowestoft the other in Oulton Broad, were closed to traffic; water in Oulton Broad at that point, was, as far as I could tell, over the foot bridge (which I use all the time when back there), and up high enough tomake the traffic bridge (which is higher), too dangerous to use; from on Twitter, teh Wherry hotel ( which I know), had its carpark flooded (a few feet higher up than the foot bridge), and I think the opposite end of the island; Yarmouth way, the bridge there was also closed; so with the River Wavney on the land side, and the sea, the other, it was a true island again with the bridges closed off; My Dad's house, is quite a bit higher ground than the area outside the Wherry Hotel/bridge, so I dont' think there was ever any chance the water really* affecting him there... In Lowestoft town center the high street, the harbour, and some of the nearby roads (Bevan ST, for one I know of), were flooded.
Hopes that the waters would entirely wash away Yarmouth were sadly not realised ( ) and the optamistic thoughts that Lowestoft would be the new Atlantus did not matterialise ( )
Tryign to find out any such information on # 'offical news sources' was hopeless though

I must actually call my Dad; the one main concern is my Moms (well stepmoms) parents were refusing to leave their bungalow.... so I need to know if my Dad had to canoe to srescue them (yeh, he's still got my 21 ft long, white water/sea Canadian Canoe)

I've yet to manage to find out where else flooded locally... I can't imagine the Lady of the Lake pub escaped (they get a very* wet cellar on ordinary high tide), and the water marks from the '53 flood, on the outside of the pub, are just about (from memory), at the level of the upstairs windows (it stands right next the bridge over the mutford local/saltside/river) and is slighly lower than the level the bridge itself

Mind, flooding, in small bits locally round there isn't that* unuseual; Dad and me once had to walk down a road, water up to our knees, on new years day morning, about 3 or 4 AM, on our way to get home, as the mixture of a high tide and snow had made the river burst the bank there and despite all the alcohol in us, it was damn cold!

They said several times that Mersea Island was cut off... but, but... it's an island Okay, there's that causeway - The Strood - that links it to the mainland, but I remember it being covered with water at high tide more than once when we went there for the day, and having to wait for the old Bill to give the okay for cars to pass.

ahh... but the bit of land, that includes Lowestoft, and I think Yarmouth (certainly Gorleston, Corton, etc), is an island; entirely surrounded by water on all sides, with only man-made bridges crossing the river bits of the water... (well, OK, half of Lowestoft, is South of the river, hence not* part of the Independant island), but... well, people from \South Lowestoft are funny....

Yeah Mersea Island gets cut off twice a day anyway... Just as well really.

And for Essex, it wasn't as bad as expected anyway.

When I was a kid we knew some people who had one of those beach huts at West Mersea. I wonder if those are worth the same kind of wedge today as the ones at places like Southwold

I hear the peak of the surge happened about two hours before high tide. If the two had coincided it could have been very bad