[jambutty]

I have had my living space flooded on three occasions in my life. 4 if you count the mock-up ship where we practiced ‘Damage Control’ before they let us loose on the real thing. But that doesn’t really count even if we ended up chest deep in water. Because the boys were playing at sailors in a sinking ship.

The first time was in 1958 on HMS Alamein a Battle Class Destroyer in the Mediterranean. It was during a RAS (for landlubbers that’s Refuelling At Sea) where Wave Victor not too far away on our port side was giving us a long drink of black, thick, smelly fuel oil.

My mess, down aft, was above one of the fuel tanks and a munitions magazine and some stupid stoker opened the wrong valve. Within minutes our mess was some six inches deep with this black gunge before it was realised that the electrician’s mess had become an auxiliary fuel tank.

The kit in the dozen or so seat lockers was ruined, as were some hammocks.

We pumped out what we could, then after that it wasn’t all hands not to the pump but all hands to buckets and cotton waste. To protect our clothes the simple solution was to take them off. With most of the fuel oil removed then the whole mess was flooded again with diesel to thin down the remnants of fuel oil under the other lockers and those awkward places that hadn’t seen the light of day since the ship was built.

Lots of hot water and soft soap finished the job and we gratefully staggered into the showers for a thorough scrub down. Followed by a complete coating of Calamine Lotion. Fuel oil and skin do not go well together.

The second time was also many years ago when my youngest daughter, then 14, had to stay in to await the Bendix washing machine engineer whilst I went to work. He came did his stuff and went. Being on Economy 7 tariff where the electricity was cheaper during the night the machine was set up and a timer got it going during the night.

Next morning we got up and paddled around the ground floor. It transpired that the engineer did not check his work before he left and had left something in a pipe that would prevent the washing machine from over flowing. The washing machine service people paid out without too much of an argument. I think that words like small claims court might have hurried up their decision.

Then about a year ago I was sat at the keyboard and a drop of water fell on my nose. Then another and in quick succession another. To cut a long story short, the young guy in the flat above who is a couple of cans short of a six pack, and his mates had previously ripped out the copper pipes for the radiators (drug/booze money I guess) and were finishing the job by attacking other copper pipes. One was the main water supply into his flat which they broke off and flooded his flat.

For the next two weeks drips of water appeared all over my flat and I learned to do the tango dancing around the buckets. But good fortune was on my side because none dripped on my bed. My telly yes, my computer monitor yes and a built in cupboard next to the fireplace and of course the kitchen and the lobby.