So yes, a bit of week.  It all kicked off on Sunday afternoon when we were having a mellow lunch in Greenwich with Brighthat, Terrie, Dan and Helen after a rather splendid evening (despite people continually killing me) when the first warning calls came through from Oxford.

Initial thoughts that concerns were excessive were doused by the report from my brother-in-law - he cycled round to our road and discovered that ours was the only house without sandbags in front of the door.  Back on the Oxford tube and to the PC World car park for sand-bag filling - you would be amazed at how quickly people can get through five tonnes of sand - and packing.  Quiet night, with levels rising steadily, and local roads starting to flood.

Monday and Tuesday morning more of the same, though getting worse.  'Today' programme reports from PC World Car Park.  Roads closed, water over the main (Botley) road that ours leads on to.  Thought that the worst was over, then this morning (2am) woken by firebrigade.  'There's a two foot high wall of water coming down the river - brace yourselves'.  Next three hours spend building sandbag walls and securing neighbours' houses.  I know it is a cliche, but a real Blitz spirit - and a really good way to meet one's new neighbours.  Wall of water hasn't hit yet but levels still rising.  TV crews hovering like vultures, eager for more disaster to continue the story.

Picture is our road at 2.45am, new delivery of sandbags, everyone mucking in.  River is behind the tree at the end of the road - about 40 yards from our front door.

After a fairly chaotic week we have finally moved into our new house - were without a functioning kitchen or hot water for several days but that is now all sorted.  Many more jobs still to do, but generally of the floor sanding/painting variety so we can gradually work through those over the coming weeks + make a start on hacking the garden into shape.

Very nice to be gettng settled after the best part of two years living on a semi temporary basis since I put my flat on the market - which reminds me I must get those boxes out of my parents' garage which I promised would only be there for a couple of months...  I type this in our new conservatory (almost finished) as the rain is starting to fall on glass overhead - very mellow.

Too knackered to do too much this weekend, though I did have a pleasant afternoon playing cricket in what is soon to be Craig's annual 'Rubbish Men Play Cricket Game'  having never played before (okay, once, when I was 11 and I wasn't allowed to wear my glasses, so you can imagine how well that went (badly, if you can't imagine, I think there might have been head injuries)) I was surprised to be put into bat at number 1, and was very happy with my 2 runs given that the person bowling against me actually did play.  We were all out for 97, comfortably beating the other side by 20 odd runs.  Much Stella was drunk and the ground (belonging to an Oxford College I shall not name - Craig did legitimately hire it, but they might not approve of boozing in the outfield during the innings) was beautiful and even the weather was glorious.  Now sore, sun burnt and even more knackered.  Hell of a week ahead of me at work, but have an Esptein gig to look forward to on Thursday night.

If you have never been to Glastonbury then you probably won't get it - it probably seems like just another music festival full of people trying too hard be 'alternative' in lots of mud. That's pretty much what I thought before I went for the first time. But I was wrong. Rather than try and explain why, I suggest you read Charlie Brooker's piece in today's Guardian here as he does a better job than I could ever do. So, in no particular order, my highlights and lowlights:

Highlights

• Local* band The Epstein getting the crowd on their feet in the Acoustic Tent at noon on Sunday (graveyard spot) with a storming set - despite 98% of the audience having never head of them (they won their slot through an unsigned bands talent competition).
  
• Alex Greenwald covering 'Just' during Mark Ronson's set on the John Peel stage - singing the last line hanging by one hand from a lighting gantry high above the stage (to the great irritation/concern of stage management) before dropping a good fifteen feet to the ground.
  
• Teaching the students next to me the best way** to drink cask strength Ardbeg during Arcade Fire's sumptuous set.
  
• Martha Wainwright in the Park
  
• Catching lots of random acts in the Trash Circus and Cabaret
  
• Eating chips with cheese at Lulu's looking out over the site just before three on Sunday morning before heading back to our tent.
  
• Our new tent keeping us perfectly dry and mud free.
  
• Drinking cask strength Ardbeg on an empty stomach first thing on Sunday morning***.
  

Lowlights

• Drinking cask strength Ardbeg on an empty stomach first thing on Sunday morning.
  
• Using a penknife to dig the ingrained mud out of the cuts in my knee.
  
• Falling over in the mud, pissed, in the dark, somewhere near the Other Stage creating the cuts mentioned in the above point.
  
• The bus from Oxford being one and a half hours late leaving which meant two hours sitting on the pavement at Gloucester Green and having to pitch our tent in the dark at 11pm on Wednesday night.
  
• The bus back to Oxford being more than one and half hours late (finally leaving at around 4.15am) which meant spending more than two hours standing out in the cold pouring rain (having previously got soaked taking down tent). The only help SeeTickets offered was begrudgingly handing out survival blankets around 4am when it became obvious that some people were displaying the early signs of hypothermia (this is not an exaggeration - some people didn't have waterproofs and were getting in a bad way - it was bloody cold last night).

Already looking forward to next year

* They have written a song about Port Meadow, that's how local.
** Take a good big mouthful, gently swill it around your mouth until your tongue goes numb and/or the pain gets too much then gently swallow.
***11.55

Sheffield is built on seven hills, just like Rome.  I learned this wonderful fact by overhearing a conversation on the train as I trundled through West Yorkshire yesterday morning.  If overheard suggests that I was eavesdropping, let me assure you that this was not the case.  The elderly gentleman in question spent the journey from Derby shouting a conversation at his (presumably all but deaf) wife - a mixture of trivia and moans interspersed with her name (Ena) every third word.

"Ena, points, Ena, we're passing through points Ena, that's why the train has slowed"

From his comprehensive knowledge of points it seemed clear that he had work on the railways - a theory supported by the officiously deferential way he treated the ticket inspector ("there you go Sir") which put me in mind of a Corporal in the presence of a senior officer.

Ena for her part, either through lack of teeth or 80 years developing a thick Yorkshire accent, was unintelligible to me, though she did respond to his comments with vim, and on occasion I suspect, venom.

The last comment I heard before detraining was "Ena, don't go loaning any money out this week Ena" which left me wondering all day.

I spent the day in the top floor of the tallest building in Sheffield, for the most part in an airless, windowless room, however I was on occasion able to nip out and see fine views of the aforementioned hills.  Alas my meeting ran late, I missed my 'target' train and left my colleagues at just after 7 - enough time to get my 'back up' train at a brisk walk with little margin for error.  I was therefore distressed to find that the security desk had closed and the doors had been locked, trapping me in.  I was able to get someone to release me, but this left me with 6 mins to cover three quarters of a mile.

My take on running is, I suspect similar, to the one Epicurus would have about Alcoholics Anonymous - I can understand why people occupy their time with it and can see the obvious health benefits, but it just isn't for me.  If you have seen John Cleese run you can perhaps visualise the sweating figure weighed down by laptop bag that flailed into Sheffield station to miss his train by 45 seconds.   I was peeved - it was going take five hours to get home.  Then fate intervened - a lightning strike had delayed the previous train by an hour and I was able to rumble back into Oxford by half past ten to beer and House on tape.