Journalist Samantha Lakehal gets to grips with The Big Storm, battling against the weather, the traffic, commuters and sewage…

---

I have to tell you about my journey home when the storm started. If I don’t, then I will be in therapy for years and never able to board a bus again.

It all started at 2.30pm and my boss said: “Sam, you can go at 2.30, you’ve had an early start, so go on, go home”.

Smiling gleefully, I had mental images of watching ‘New Life Down Under’ and ‘Home and Away’ and having a nice cuppa, surfing the net and talking to various online pals.

So did my nice afternoon materialise? Did it heck as like!

Whilst waiting for the bus, the storm started with big sod off claps of thunder and lightning.

Bearing in mind I was wearing my nice new suede mules on my feet and had bare legs, I need to elaborate that one of my hates is wet bare legs.

I started chatting to this very nice guy at the bus stop who very kindly offered me his HEAVY holdall to cover my new shoes with and protect from the rain. Thanks for that.

So I got on the bus, rode a little way up the road and the bus drove through about 3 foot of water, felt a little smug because I was on the bus going home.

Felt slightly less smug when the bus flooded and we had to raise our legs to avoid the several inches of water swishing around.

Then you won’t believe what realisation suddenly hit me.

HANGAR LANE! The hazard of my journey from the where I work to my home (at least 6 miles I might add), is getting past Hangar Lane before flood, car crash, oil spill – in fact anything, before some disaster gridlocks it.

Hangar Lane to those who don’t know is the equivalent of your heart in your body, anything that blocks it, screws up your journey.

Sure enough, as we turned round about a mile away from Gypsy corner, we were informed by bus control that it was under about 4 foot of water, with a car stuck/floating/swimming in the middle.

With all the traffic gridlocked, we were going nowhere.

After an hour on a stationary bus and making quite a few friends, we were told that most of the tubes had been stopped too.

“Let’s walk,” some twit shouted bravely.

You know what it’s like, you have to um and ah about these decisions for at least 10 minutes.

But, the thought of spending the weekend and my old age on this bus, yes, I had better walk in my new suede mules and nice skirt.

“Walk? Walk? Do you know it’s at least five miles?” said the bus driver, shocked. We had been his friends in the disaster for the past half hour, maybe he didn’t want to be left alone.

So walk we did. Four of us set off, two Indian guys (lovely chaps) and a girl from Peru whose English extended to ‘South Harrow’, ‘Hungry’, ‘Oh No’, and by the time I finished with her, ‘Samantha’.

As we got to Gypsy Corner, it looked like some American disaster movie.

You know when the traffic is gridlocked, everyone is standing outside of their cars, horns are bibbing (why I don’t know, no-one’s going anywhere) and all you can here are police/ambulance/fire engine sirens?

On all four corners of Gypsy corner was traffic, people with cameras and police on motorbikes. And in the middle was the biggest river I had ever seen.

“How the hell are we going to cross this?” I mumbled to my non English speaking girlfriend from Peru.

“South Harrow” was all she could say. So I nodded in agreement.

One huge fat chunky solid woman in a bellowing pink dress and flip flops, bravely decided to wade through what must have been three feet of water, which luckily had gone down.

Men everywhere started cheering every time a woman went through.

“Sod this, that’s too deep for me,” I said to my new friend (MNF for short) and we opted for the shallower river at two-and-a-half feet.

So whipping off my mules and hoiking my skirt up and persuading MNF it really was the only way through, we walked through the river.

Now I know why the men were cheering. Where the man hole covers had popped out into the air because they couldn’t cope with the pressure, sewage had ‘popped out’ with it.

So ‘Samantha Blacklegs’ was born.

As a good Samaritan, I had decided to tell each person waiting for the 487 bus that there wasn’t one coming.

There’s more…