Many of you will know about the unseasonably wet weather which hit South Yorkshire at the start of this week, causing widespread flooding.  The damage caused has been terrible - hundreds of homes were filled with sewage contaminated water and many more were forced to leave their homes as there was a risk of a dam failing, flooding not only houses but also a major electricity substation and the M1 motorway.  Transport by road and rail has been very hard work of late.

All photographs from BBC South Yorkshire - see full albums here  

Somewhat strangely, despite my living less than two miles from the centre of Sheffield, the only visible signs I had of the devastation were dodging through the completely gridlocked traffic on Monday whilst walking home, and the rolling power cuts.  Although living atop a large hill is quite annoying in the winter snow and ice, at times like this it's something of a relief to be so far above the river levels.

As a result of a National Grid substation in north west Sheffield getting a bit damp, it was very much out of commission and the remaining supplies into the area were insufficient.  As a result, the local electricity distributor CE Electric implemented a series of rolling blackouts to give everyone a fair share of the available power.  Fortunately most of the outages in my street happened while I was at work anyway.  Most impressive is that CE Electric managed to optioneer, design, gain permission for, install and commisssion an emergency cross-city interconnector cable by Thursday afternoon (the damage happening on Monday night) meaning that the power cuts were no longer necessary.

More heavy rain is forecast this weekend and everyone is hoping that this won't lead to a repeat of the scenes seen earlier this week. 

As stated on the Sheffield City Council website, if anyone would like to donate money to those affected by the flooding, send it to The Lord Mayor's Fund - Flood, Lord Mayor's Office, Town Hall, Sheffield, S1 2HH, United Kingdom.

| | | | | Trackback | Permalink (pingbacks enabled) | No Comments »

Maybe I'm being naïve here… but if anyone can explain the thinking behind, erm, locking your private parts into a superglued padlock I'd love to hear it!  (read the story here)

| | | | | Trackback | Permalink (pingbacks enabled) | No Comments »

Sheffield City Council is a member of the Scores On The Doors website, which allows you to search for restaurants and takeaways and view their most recent hygiene ratings.  The service can now also be used on mobile phones - click here for details.

The search results confirm what every Broomhill resident already knows: Millennium is the most minging takeaway in the area… see the results for all the local takeaways here! 

It's interesting to note that some of the Pizza Hut branches in Sheffield have quite poor scores… 

| | | | | Trackback | Permalink (pingbacks enabled) | No Comments »

I went to give blood for the first time in over a year this week.  My enforced absence was because of the bone marrow donation I did last year - I had to wait a year before giving blood again.

This graph, shamelessly stolen from the National Blood Service, shows how low blood stocks are at the moment - backing up the rather urgent reminder card I received in the post the other day:

For anyone who has never donated before, or hasn't donated for a while, maybe now would be a good time to return?  We're fortunate here in Sheffield city centre to have a permanent donation centre that is open office hours but you can find your next local session by clicking here.

| | | | | Trackback | Permalink (pingbacks enabled) | 1 Comment »