Riddance

Hurrah! Hurrah! I am writing this just after midnight on the very day on which England finally bans smoking in all public and work places. Tonight Shirley and I went down to the local and three young people - in their twenties - sat next to us and lit up their evil little tobacco cylinders. But that's the last time! Next week they will have to breathe out their stinking smoke at home or stand out under the stars making smoke rings.

I loathe smoking. Everything about it but mostly the foul stink of it. I hate the stench of stale smoke on my clothes and I hate the way it catches the back of your throat and stings your eyes. And I hate the commercial thrust of it - the advertising, the profit hungry targeting of vulnerable people. Everything about smoking stinks.

Lungs. Guess which pair belonged to a smoker!

This is how the BBC have heralded July 1st - "Smokers across England are having their final puff at work and the pub before the ban on lighting up in enclosed public places begins at 0600 on Sunday. The move follows bans across the UK, and is intended to cut deaths from secondhand smoke. Many venues are planning farewell events for the final Saturday night, while local authorities are preparing to enforce the ban. Anyone lighting up illegally will face a fine of up to £200."

Since this ban was announced in Parliament we have had to wait a long, long time but finally the day of reckoning has arrived and at last we, the non-smoking majority have got the upperhand. I have not one iota of sympathy for hardened smokers but I hope that this ban will inspire hundreds more of them to say goodbye and good riddance to the dreaded weed.

Transience

Nothing lasts forever... Take this blogging lark. In my "Planet Blog" list of blogs I like to visit (see right of this post) there are now several blogs that used to be very active but have now either been forgotten, mothballed or deliberately neglected. Perhaps the bloggers just got fed up with it all and have moved on to other diversionary hobbies. Every time I click and find nothing new, it's like I am losing an old friend or a human connection that meant something to me but has now ceased to be.... "Hanging Hope on a Heads Up 1973 Penny", "Arthur Clewley's Diary", "Brad the Gorilla" ... just examples of blogs that have been put on ice. But as each old blog fades away, along comes a gang of new vivacious bloggers such as "Muddy Boots" from my homeland and "Mutterings and Meanderings". All is not lost. As in life, we must move on. Move on.

I have been a blogger for just over two years now. Mostly, I have enjoyed this hobby. It is an outlet for my everlasting dreams about publishing and sharing words with others and it has been a useful way into connecting with different bloggers around the globe. I enjoy the fact that it is free, uncensored, uncontrolled and almost anarchic. However, I don't like the sound of the word "blogger". It's like an informal term for someone who spends too long on the lavatory reading a newspaper, groaning with the muscular exertion of it all before depositing a bricklike "blog". Ah well...

Water

The schoolboy on the right is Ryan Parry. He died yesterday afternoon at the tender age of fourteen whilst investigating flood waters surging down the River Sheaf, just one of five normally tiny streams that run through Sheffield.

He wasn't the only one to die. An unnamed pensioner got out of his waterlogged car on The Wicker - close to Lady's Bridge over the River Don and got swept away by the flood waters. Regarding this man's death, a police spokesman said "The waters rose extremely quickly- the victim was with another man and the water level rose from ankle deep to chest deep. Soon both men were paddling and trying to pull themselves along the bridge wall. The victim got into difficulty and the other man tried to assist him but was not able to pull him from the flood. He got to the side and shouted for help. A member of the public managed to pull the by-then unconscious pensioner from the water a few minutes later. Members of the public then tried to resuscitate the man until paramedics arrived and took him to Northern General Hospital where he died. "

I have lived in Sheffield for thirty years and have never known a day like yesterday. The rain was torrential. Water was surging down our street like a river but we were safe because we live on a hillside, far above Endcliffe Park which is a mini-flood plain for the River Porter. Floods will never reach us even if both polar ice-caps melt entirely.

My school closed at lunchtime yesterday and today school was cancelled - no electricity and huge puddles around the entrances with so many staff living in badly flooded outlying areas. I put in some extra work at Ian's new house and all the time there were sirens outside and snarling traffic jams. It was like World War III had arrived. Puddles were forming in his cellar as rain trickled down the old coal chute.

Of course the floods of the last thirty six hours bring echoes back of another flood that happened in the city on March 11th 1864. This is often known as "The Forgotten Flood" - probably because it happened "Up North" where life was more dispensable. It is known that over 250 people were drowned in that flood when the Dale Dyke Dam on the edge of the city burst and sent water gushing down the Loxley Valley towards Malin Bridge and Hillsborough. Destruction included 415 dwelling houses, 106 factories/shops, 64 other buildings, 20 bridges and 4478 cottage/market gardens. Despite being one of the biggest man-made disasters in British history, and now being annually recorded in the Guinness Book of Records, few people today - even in Sheffield - know a deal, if anything at all, about the flood.

An artist's impression of what happened at Dale Dyke Dam on March 11th 1864.

This blog entry is dedicated to Ryan Parry, the unnamed pensioner and the forgotten victims of the Great Sheffield Flood of 1864. May they rest in peace.