MURPHY'S LAW STRIKES AGAIN

Just when you think everything is going to plan, the phone rings and a voice tells you that there are problems with the transmitter and your radio show is now due to go out NEXT Friday and not this one. This posting should be up within minutes of the advertised time for my show (see previous posting) so I apologise for that and blame it on the aforementioned Murphy. So expect to hear my dulcet tones on the ether on Friday 29th April at 1pm UK time. Damn that Murphy...

VOLTAROL GOES LIVE!

Many apologies for the long gap since the last posting. Things in Voltarol World have been a bit chaotic for the last few weeks for various reasons but I will be back on course, continuing the John McCartney story and explaining the gap in transmission in the next couple of weeks. But in the meantime - as of tomorrow you can hear 'Adventures in the Din Trade' as a live two hour radio programme every Friday for the next three months! It goes out between 1 p.m. and 3 p.m.on The Source FM, which you can listen to on line here.

John McCartney – the animated bassist Part Three

Further doings in the Gig Shop

The story of the Gig Shop is a saga in its own right so I won’t go into that right now, but some details are relevant to these tales of John. Within about a year of the shop’s opening it was doing very well and the time had come to find bigger premises. I rented a shop on the High Street and soon had a young manager (Colin) working for me full time, as well as regular part time assistance from – amongst others – John McCartney.

By this time, John and I were beginning to spend a lot of time together out of shop hours. At the end of most working days we would repair to our pub of choice (generally The Metropolitan Tavern in Windsor Street) for a pint or two before going home. With our partners we would also meet at each other’s homes for dinner at the weekends (if neither of us had a gig). This routine was expanded for a while when my friend Tom came to work at the shop. His home was added to the Saturday night roster and his wife, Jean, was soon also providing regular meals for what became known briefly as The Ranting Society.

John’s cartooning skills were soon employed for Gig Shop advertising. Between us we created a character called ‘Doctor Phelger’, whom I had pitched to John as the sort of spurious medical man that one might find depicted on a Victorian Patent Medicine label. The good doctor sported a soup-strainer moustache and a monocle, and made pronouncements that contained such phrases as ‘…earnestly commends to your attention…’ and ‘…begs to inform you of the great virtues of…’ One of his slogans was “A superior device at a gentlemanly price”. Our advertising style was soon drawing the attention of other businesses and we were commissioned to design a tee-shirt for Aria guitars, and a Christmas card for Custom Sound Amplification, both of which tasks we leapt at.

One of our less bizarre advertisements...

This one however is at the other end of the scale...

The Christmas card was based on a joke that I had first heard told by the late Matt McGinn and depicted Santa with his sleigh and reindeer in severe disarray on top of a collapsed public convenience which they have obviously just flown into at high speed. The door of one of the WCs has fallen open to reveal an outraged figure seated upon the throne with his trousers round his ankles (this was a very fine caricature of Custom Sound’s MD). The vista of a high street stretches beyond Santa (whose sleigh bears many ‘presents’ with the Custom Sound logo on them), and you can just make out that one of the shops is called ‘Schmidt’s House of Music’. A manic Santa is berating a severely concussed Rudolph with the words “You fool! I said ‘Land on the SCHMIDT House!’” Well, it made us laugh…Alas I no longer have a copy but if anyone out there does then I would love to see it!

The tee-shirt was commissioned by Pete Tullet, the MD of Gigsville, which was then the UK distributor of Aria guitars. Pete was particularly enthusiastic about the (then) new Aria SB1000 series basses. It was his firm belief that they would topple the Fender Precision bass from its best-seller position, and referred to the aforementioned instruments as ‘the dinosaurs of the electric bass world’. We came up with an image and text that he liked and the shirts were duly printed and distributed. We are still waiting for the demise of the dinosaur although to be fair, the SB1000 was a good design and is still being made. Sadly, the tee-shirts are not.

I found this one in the loft. I had to wash it a few times but it's not in bad condition given that it's 28 years old.

Actually, now I come to think about it, our advertising style may not have been as good as we thought. All three businesses that used us are now defunct!

There was a Council-run music facility not far from the shop, called ‘Unit One’, which provided a recording studio, rehearsal rooms, somewhere to stage gigs, and a basic café. This was provided by Youth Services or some such wing of the Council but was actually a pretty vibrant place. This was of course in the time of Punk so the place was positively heaving with bands, many of which were surprisingly good, but a lot of older musicians took advantage of its cheap rates for rehearsals and recording, myself included.

One of the young bands that frequented the place was called The Belairs and two of them – Neil and Anthony - were also customers in the Gig Shop. They affected a clothing style that was reminiscent of a 1950’s home insurance salesman and a musical style that hinted at swing and featured two saxophonists but used one of the newly emergent rhythm boxes ( I think it was manufactured by Electro Harmonix) to provide the ‘swing drums’. They were writing their own songs which were for the most part witty and distinctive, and had just acquired a manager (an equally young out of work actor called Richard Painter), who had no money to put behind them but was prepared to work hard on their behalf.

Neil approached me one day and asked if I would be interested in helping them out a bit by putting some more ‘authentic’ swing guitar into their work, as well as some percussion and some harmonica. He also asked me if I knew of a bass player that might fulfil a similar function for them. The net result is that John and I became members of the band – now renamed The Figaro Club (a band called The Belairs already existed in the US and so the new name was borrowed from a short-lived TV series from 1981) – and set about refashioning ourselves in an approximately youthful image for stage appearances. I went with the 1950’s bit but – as the possessor of a goatee beard - opted for a sort of ‘beatnik’ look, complete with black beret, striped tee-shirt, neckerchief and corduroy trousers. Unfortunately the overall effect was more onion seller than existentialist but I decide that that would do. John dug out a tank top and a tweed suit and tried to do something with his unruly mop of curly hair, We weren’t quite sure what effect he was striving for but the result was rather reminiscent of a younger Colonel Gadaffi  trying to pass himself off as an Englishman.

Left to right: Neil, Voltarol, John and Anthony during the Windsor Street Bed Race

L. to R.: Saxophonist Tim hiding behind saxophonist and vocalist Duncan, Neil, Voltarol and Anthony. Richard Painter can be seen in the shop doorway behind the bandstand, between John and Anthony

Richard the manager worked hard and got the band a lot of exposure. We were quite popular locally and on one occasion did a gig in the street entertaining the crowds that had come watch the annual ‘bed race’ (a bizarre fund-raising event that involved teams of men in drag pushing hospital beds around the town) but were also performing ‘showcase’ gigs at places like ‘The Fridge’ in Brixton. It was at one of these, at a disco in Southall, that I first saw John’s character suddenly transformed for the worse by alcohol. John did not drink during a gig, but immediately after a performance would chuck down two or three beers quite swiftly. On this occasion Anthony had done a rather unfortunate thing and had stopped the band 30 seconds into a song, because he was unhappy with the tempo. He reset the rhythm box and then started us off again. After we had finished our set John hastened to the bar and took a lot of beer on board quite quickly then went and sought out Anthony and positively monstered at him, stabbing his finger into Anthony’s chest, slurring a bitter tirade against the unprofessionalism of restarting a song, and repeatedly calling him a ‘barsa’, which was as close as he could get to pronouncing the word ‘bastard’. We were all somewhat stunned by this but the following day he was his usual amiable self and was quite apologetic.

Promo night at The Fridge - Neil, Voltarol and John. John's slightly distracted look was due to the presence in the audience of his wife Brenda, who was 9 months pregnant with their son James. Mrs Voltarol was also there on standby in case a sudden rush to hospital was required...

The band was soon offered a record deal and one weekend a few months later we all trooped into the famous Jacobs Recording Studio to record a single. Much to my surprise Neil and Anthony shared my taste for the stories of Damon Runyon and had crafted a song between them which was most Runyonesque. It was called ‘Say, That’s a Great Dress You’re Wearing’ and, we all thought, had hit potential. Obviously, whoever it was that had put the money up thought so too and we spent all of that Saturday recording it and another song – the name of which now escapes me – that had been written by one of the saxophonists. We were well pleased with our efforts and left the studio that night with the feeling that we might have something really commercial on our hands and were already speculating about our first major tour. We had completed everything but the lead vocal on ‘Great Dress’ and Neil was due to return to the studio the following day – Sunday – to replace his guide track with the definitive performance. Imagine my reaction when Richard Painter phoned me on Sunday evening to say that Neil had apparently been instructed by God not to continue with the recording and to leave the band. John and I rechristened the band there and then as ‘The Band That Ripped Its Own Head Off and Then Pissed in the Hole’.


To be continued...

John McCartney – the animated bassist. Part Two

Gig Shop days...

About a year or so after I started working for Uxbridge Music the company that owned it announced that they were closing the shop down. I suddenly found myself about to be unemployed but by this time I was living with my girlfriend (who was later to become Mrs Voltarol) and we had bought a flat together so I needed to do something, and I needed to do it quickly. I was certain that Uxbridge Music had gone under because it wasn’t carrying the right stock and I was equally certain that I could get my own business off the ground  - although not in Uxbridge Music’s premises because the overheads were too high. That shop was located at the end of an arcade and was quite large, but there were a number of smaller units in the arcade and one had just become vacant. I scraped together enough money for the first month’s rent, negotiated a couple of trade accounts with some musical instrument suppliers and opened my own shop.

Voltarol behind the counter of Pete's Gig Shop Mark I

Initially, the stock was pretty basic. I had a good range of guitar stings and accessories, a few amplifiers and a couple of guitars. Then I came to an arrangement with the then recently established (but now defunct) ‘Gigsville’ company who were distributing Aria guitars in the UK. I would buy their ‘seconds’ and damaged guitars at a discount and have them repaired and improved by my old friend from the Jugular Vein, Richard Bartram, who was then based in Hayes and rapidly establishing himself as a first-rate luthier and guitar repair man. Within a short time I found myself in need of an extra pair of hands in the shop. John McCartney was a frequent visitor as he was not currently working during the day, so it seemed logical that I should employ him on a casual labour basis. This was an arrangement that suited both of us because I did not yet need – and could not afford – a full time employee, and John did not want the commitment of a full time job, being in the same position that I had been in with the Jugular Vein some ten years previously.

It soon became apparent that John was not best suited to shop work – or at least, not Music shop work – because he was all too easily distracted from the customers by the opportunity to practice the bass. He would sit himself down on an amplifier and hunch over a bass guitar, running endless scales, bits of Bach, funky riffs, chorded runs, harmonic flurries and the bass lines to innumerable jazz standards. He never bothered to plug the instrument in but instead would rest his chin on the ‘horn’ of the instrument’s body – just below the strap button – and listen to himself via bone conduction. The result was that the rest of the world would just fade out for him as he became more and more absorbed in what he was doing, and despite the fact that the shop was little more than sixteen feet long by about ten feet wide, a customer could stand there for ten minutes at a time before being noticed.

Despite this I liked having John around. He wasn’t a skiver: he was just easily distracted, so with a modicum of tactful management I could get him to do the occasional useful things around the premises. Unfortunately, even when his body was involved in the job in hand, his brain often wasn’t. The length of one wall of the shop had been battened off and covered in pegboard to facilitate the display of guitars on hangers. One day whilst I was out getting some lunch, John enthusiastically took down all the instruments that were on display, cleaned and polished them, and re-hung them on the wall, giving the bass guitars priority on the top row and relegating the electric and acoustic guitars to the bottom one. Unfortunately he had failed to take into consideration such factors as the weight difference between said instruments, and the potentially disastrous consequences of the cantilever effect when applied to the top of the peg board. I returned to the shop just in time to see John watching, fascinated, as a complete sheet of pegboard peeled itself off the wall and deposited my entire guitar stock in a heap on the floor. There was a moment of silence as the dust settled and then John opened his mouth, worked his jaw mutely for maybe twenty seconds and  said “Bugger”. He picked up couple of guitars and inspected them for damage. Finding nothing major, but several chips and ‘dings’ to the finishes he looked at me hopefully and said “Discount Sale?”

Regardless of occasional incidents like this I continued to employ John whenever I needed someone to help out. He could field phone calls in a civilised manner, deal with basic sales of things like strings and plectrums, and his playing impressed the hell out of most of the would-be ‘musos’ that found their way into Pete’s Gig Shop’, as my little business was called. But most of all he was just fun to have around. We could make each other laugh all too easily and frequently devised elaborate practical jokes which we perpetrated on the customers. One such was the ‘Je Ne Sais Quoi’ pedal.

There is a breed of electric guitarist that believes that the purchase of a new effects pedal was the equivalent of six months of guitar practice. One such -  a bus driver who I shall call ‘Jon Lee’ – was a regular visitor to the shop and was for ever ‘evaluating’ the worth of the latest effects pedals, although rarely buying much beyond the occasional plectrum or spare string. He could bore for England but wasn’t a bad chap, so although we would shudder inwardly when he came into the shop, he was nevertheless treated politely at all times and would even qualify for the occasional cup of coffee. He was totally convinced of his own superior musical and technical worth despite the evidence of his own ears which should have told him all that he needed to know every time he picked up a guitar and played it. In that respect he was a bit like the character ‘Dave Lister’ in Red Dwarf.

John and I had mocked up a display box and had arranged for one of our more electronically gifted customers to create a fake foot pedal for us, which was in effect simply a connecting box. In the manner of all guitar foot-pedals it had an ‘on-off’ foot switch on the top and a jack-socket at either end labelled ‘in’ and ‘out’, but was otherwise blank. The use of this unit achieved absolutely nothing. The outer box was labelled ‘Prototype - JNSQ.’ We put it on the pedals shelf and waited for a victim. It was rare that a day went by without a visit from Jon Lee and we did not have to wait long for his arrival.

“Afternoon, Men.” he said. (He affected a ‘huntin’, shootin’ and fishin’’ type of persona – all hearty and with dropped ‘g’ endings – “Anythin’ new and excitin’?” (This was a standard opening gambit). We said that there was nothing much – well not really…and I saw that he was eying the pedal shelf carefully.

“What’s that then, that prototype thingy?” he enquired. We informed him that it was nothing much - well, it was and it wasn’t…more of a professional tool for the studio really that we were trying out for the manufacturers…The bait was taken.

“Sounds interestin’” he said. “What does it do exactly?” We said that it was hard to explain but that it just gave your sound that little extra…something…that je ne sais quoi ...it was just so subtle that you needed really good ears to detect the effect. “Look,” we said, “we’ll show you”.

Jon Lee chose the most expensive guitar in stock and lifted it down from the wall – this was his standard practice – and then took the proffered jack lead from me and connected it to the guitar. John took the other end of the lead and plugged it into the ‘in’ socket on the JNSQ and then connected another lead between the ‘out’ socket and a guitar amplifier, switched on the amp and said ‘There you go. Try that” to Jon Lee. Mr Lee adjusted the guitar sound and the amp sound to his liking (a procedure that involved much ‘umming’ and ‘aahing’ combined with theatrical tweaks to the various controls involved, but invariably resulted in everything being set at ‘10’ with the exception of the volume control on the amp) then strummed his first chord. There was so much overdrive from the amp that the guitar made a noise like a sheet of steel being thrown through a plate glass window onto a circular saw. Jon Lee nodded his approval and then depressed the footswitch on the pedal and strummed again. The same horrendous sound emanated from the amplifier. Another nod from Mr Lee and the footswitch was depressed again, and again the atmosphere was rent apart by the banshee wail.

“Very nice!” said Jon Lee, “It’s subtle but it’s excellent.”

“They don’t come much subtler than that” said John, with a perfectly straight face, “We’ll report your findings to the designers. Why don’t you put it through its paces?” He turned to me and gave me his most evil leer. “I’m sure Pete will take some notes for you. Unfortunately I have to leave early as I have a gig tonight.” He grabbed his windcheater from behind the counter and fled through the door, barely able to suppress his sniggers, and in his best Shakespearean voice declaimed “I give you Good Day!” before disappeared from view, laughing like a drain. It was at least a week before I forgave him for that


To be continued....

John McCartney – the animated bassist

Several times over the past few years I have announced my intention of writing more about the late - and many would say - great John McCartney. I finally got round to starting this task but very soon realised that this story would take more than one posting to do it any kind of justice. Here, therefore, is part one of the story of my friendship with him.

Around 1977 I was working in a music shop in Uxbridge called – unsurprisingly – Uxbridge Music. It was owned at that time by John Gummer (no, not that John Gummer but the one who had previously been a director of City Organ and Record Centres) and Richard ‘Rick’ Watts (late of Simms Watts Amplification). One morning, a tall, curly haired and well spoken chap came into the shop for some bass strings. I served him with a set of Rotosound  ‘Swing Bass’ Round wound strings and then he asked if he could try out one of the electric basses that we had in stock. I said “yes”, plugged in the second hand Burns Bison bass that had taken his fancy, excused myself and went over to answer the telephone. The next thing I heard was Charlie Parker’s ‘Donna Lee’ being executed superbly. This was only a  year after Jaco Pastorius had burst on to the scene and turned every electric bassist’s world upside down. I had heard many an aspiring bassist try to emulate Jaco’s version of this tune, but I had never heard anyone get beyond the first four bars without stumbling before, and certainly not at the speed of the original performance. This guy had it completely under control and – much to my amazement – wasn’t actually ‘show-boating’ his performance. He had his face to the wall and had turned the volume down on the amp!

That was my first introduction to John McCartney. I tried to engage him in conversation to maybe find out a bit more about him but he politely resisted my gambits and left the shop. The next time he came in I tried again, and the next. It wasn’t until about his fourth visit to the shop that his social defences went down and he accepted the offer of a cup of coffee (a courtesy extended to all regular customers) and stayed for a chat. It soon became obvious that we had quite a lot in common. He was a jazz enthusiast who also enjoyed the funkier end of the music spectrum; he was literate and much given to obscure biblical and Shakespearean quotations and he had a positively evil sense of humour. Over the next few months we became fast friends.

I discovered that John had been a professional animator for the Richard Williams studio but was currently attempting to make a living purely by playing jazz. As any one who has ever tried this knows, no matter how good you are and how much you work it is almost impossible to make a decent living without resorting to day jobs as well. At this time John was pursuing another strand of his life – a love of alcohol – by working as wine salesman during the day. This involved visiting potential clients by pre-arranged appointment and armed with a case of samples, then persuading said potential client to purchase cases of the stuff. The basic salary for this was small but the possible commission was quite good. I offered to become a  client and arranged for a couple of my friends to be present for John’s visit to my flat, thus theoretically expanding his putative earnings.

John arrived at the appointed hour and I introduced him to my friends. The wine glasses were enthusiastically produced and the first bottle was offered up for tasting. John requested a glass for himself as well, so that he could “talk us through them”. There were twelve different bottles and we tried them all over the next two hours, successfully making a very large dent in John’s samples. The fact was that we none of us had sufficient disposable income at that time to buy a whole case of wine each. Never the less, even as John assured us somewhat alcoholically that it was not a problem, our collective guilt kicked in and my friends and I scraped together enough money to buy one case (the cheapest on offer) between us. John never actually said that this was the norm for his sales ventures but soon after that his career as a peripatetic vintner faded quietly away.

To be continued...

Paulo Moura, master musician

The great Brazilian clarinettist and saxophonist Paulo Moura died on July 12^th last year. I’m usually on top of the news from Brazil but this event passed me by and I did not find out about it until a few days ago, when I visited his web site to see if there were any new recordings available. This was the second piece of bad news that I had received from Brazil this month (see my previous posting) and although it concerned the death of only one man as opposed to over 800 people in the floods at the latest figure, I was equally saddened by it.

I first became aware of Paulo Moura on a compilation CD that I bought about 18 years ago called ‘The Sounds of Brazil’ This particular album seems to have disappeared now, although a quick internet search reveals that umpteen different compilations with the same name are currently available. There was nothing that special about this one, except that there was so little Brazilian material available in my part of the world at the time that I would buy anything that I could get my hands on, even if a CD only had one or two tracks of apparent interest to me. Such was the case here. I bought the album for two tracks by Gilberto Gil and one featuring Milton Nascimento.

Imagine my surprise and delight when one track grabbed my attention far more than the ones I had bought the album for. That track was ‘Chorinho pra Você’ (Chorinho for You – you can read about chorinho -  or choro as it is better known in this country - here) and it was credited to one Paulo Moura. There was no further information but I was hooked by the sound, which was like no other Brazilian music that I had heard at that point. It seemed like some kind of weird hybrid of Latin-American rhythms and New Orleans jazz, but with amazing bass counterpoint runs which were played on what I now know to be a seven string guitar, a six string guitar, and another high, driving, stringed instrument sound that I thought was another kind of mandolin but which turned out to be a cavaquinho. This was magical stuff that combined great ensemble playing with improvisation of the highest order. Paulo Moura’s clarinet was great, and there was also a splendid trombonist with a unique sound and terrific technique. Oh, and the whole thing was powered by a three piece percussion section led by what I eventually discovered to be a pandeiro.

All in all, this one track laid the foundations for the major expansion of my interest in Brazilian music and acted as a stepping-off point to a whole new world of stuff. I made my first trip to Brazil the following year and set out around the São Paulo record shops (the CD format was slow to take off in Brazil and most shops had far more cassettes than CDs at that time) with a list of artists that I was interested in and with the guidance of Alberto, who I met on that first trip and who subsequently became one of my best friends. Paulo Moura was on that list but I didn’t get my hands on ‘Mistura e Manda’ ('Mixed and Sent'. Thanks to my friend Vagner for help with that translation!)* - the album from which ‘Chorinho pra Você’ was taken - until a few years later. By that time I was already pretty certain that the trombonist was the splendid Zé da Velha because I had subsequently recognised his sound on other albums that I had bought, but I now learned that the 7 string guitarist was the extraordinarily talented and now late lamented Rafael Rabello. Another notable musician on the album was the bandolim player Joel Nascimento - also a favourite of mine - and although he didn’t play on that first track that I heard, it does illustrate rather nicely how one discovery can lead on to another.

As I acquired more albums of Brazilian music I began to notice how often Paulo Moura would crop up in the credits, and not just as a choro musician. The 1962 Cannonball Adderley release – ‘Cannonball’s Bossa Nova’ – features the eponymous Mr Adderley with the Bossa Rio Sextet, a group which included Sergio Mendes on piano, Dom um Romão on drums (who would go on to play with Weather Report), and a certain Paulo Moura on alto saxophone. The fact is that Paulo Moura was another of those musicians who transcended genre and just played music. He was as at home in a classical setting as he was in a jazz environment and he brought elements of both to bear when he played choro. One of my favourite albums of his is called ‘Rhapsody in Bossa – Paulo Moura visita Gershwin and Jobim’ (Paulo Moura visits Gershwin and Jobim). It is a live recording from 1998 and features – unsurprisingly – compositions by George Gershwin and Tom Jobim. However, the whole programme is played with a mixture of jazz feeling, Latin rhythms and humour, not to mention a sprinkling of circus band and a touch of Klezmer!

I could continue to enthuse about his various albums at great length but if you’ve read this far then you are probably interested enough to go out and buy one of them. I know that I will be watching closely for any previously unobtainable material that may be issued in the wake of his death. For me at least, I feel sad to think that I will now never get to see him perform live…

This is a version of Chorinho pra Voce which is taken from a great film about Choro and Choro musicians, called 'Brasilerinho'. It's available on DVD and is an absolute joy of a movie. Incidentally, I'm pretty sure that the trombonist on this is Ze da Velha.

Paulo was equally at home with the younger musicians. Here he is with Yamandu Costa in a version of  La Paloma which they recorded together when Yamandu was in his early twenties




Paulo Moura – 1932 - 2010

* updated translation - the phrase is roughly equivalent in meaning to: "chuck it in and see what happens". Thanks to Son of Voltarol for that.

A sad Anniversary

It’s exactly a year since I was in Teresópolis  ( see Back in Brazil again) and I was saddened to discover this morning that it had been badly hit by the floods in Brazil, with over 100 people dead. It’s hard to get one’s head around the fact that torrential rains can flood a place that is 2,800 feet above sea level, even though I’m well aware of the number of rivers in the vicinity and in fact have experienced heavy rainfall and rising rivers in that region first hand.

A few years ago we were travelling back to Rio de Janeiro after a week spent exploring in Minas Gerais. It started to rain and within a few minutes it was falling so heavily that we had to pull off the road and stop, as visibility was down to about ten feet. We sat in the car and watched as great chutes of churning, mud-coloured water began to burst from the banks at the sides of the road and gush down the highway, carrying all manner of detritus before them. Fortunately the rain eased back to a less terrifying level after about twenty minutes, and we were able to proceed – somewhat cautiously – on our way. Never-the-less, the rain continued to fall heavily and steadily for the next three hours and we drove past several rivers whose waters were lapping over their banks, and it became clear to us that we were not likely to make it to Rio that night.

We ended up in the vilest hotel it has ever been my misfortune to stay in, in the town of Petrópolis, which is quite near Teresópolis and has much to recommend it, although the Hotel Girassol definitely does not fall in to that category. But that’s a tale for another day.

For those of you who wish to know more about the floods you can check out the BBC report here.