... Good Morning, Forest City NC

Hi everyone,

I’m typing this in a curious frame of mind.  It’s 2245 on a Friday evening, and I’ve just come back from a road crash rescue callout (relax: it wasn’t a bad one in the scheme of things, although I expect the driver will be sore tomorrow).  This is a post that I was mulling over today.  I’m now sitting in the kitchen with a glass of wine and I can’t resist the feeling that typing it would be the most decompressing thing imaginable.

A blog that I read regularly is Tales of a Kansas Farm Mom, written by a lady named Nicole.  To name it is to describe it (as you might imagine), and it’s a charming look at one person’s life in the great state of Kansas.  On the accompanying Facebook page today, Nicole noted how the weather there was humid and hot and she asked what it was like where her readers are:

The resulting roll-call of locations piqued my interest.  I have a feedjit app on this blog (see the right of the screen.  I’m constantly surprised by where people come to this blog from.  I’ve noted that one regular reader is referred here from Facebook, and that that reader is apparently in Forest City, North Carolina.  I’m not exactly certain who they are, as only a couple of my Facebook friends are from that state, and none from Forest City to the best of my knowledge.

 

 

Wikipedia tells me that Forest City has about 7000 people (making it roughly twice the size of Tatura).  It has a number of historically significant buildings, and it has a baseball team.  In short, it seems like a good place to call a home town.  So, hello to the reader in Forest City, NC!

Image from here

Home towns – and homes - have been on my mind a bit today as a significant weather system passed over much of Victoria.  There were warnings of very heavy rainfall (indeed, it’s been raining all day) and flash flooding.  As you can imagine, I’ve been kind of waiting for the pager to go off all day.  It hasn’t, and the only time it beeped today (aside from this evening’s road crash) was for a leaking roof in Shepparton.  We asked an auxiliary unit in that town to check it out and deal with it if they could.

 Regrettably, for a number of genuinely sound reasons, there was very little that could be done aside from guidance on mitigating the damage.  I agreed with the approach taken – I would have dealt with the matter in much the same way - but I still felt a bit flat about it all.  Our unit had spent Thursday evening training in sandbagging, which is the ultimate step in protecting a home (from floodwater). 

When that’s the sort of protection you aspire to provide, it’s a dead letdown not to be able to help someone as fully as you want to be able to.  Having the best of reasons doesn’t alter that.

With all that in mind, then, let’s hear from each other.  In the comments, tell us where you’re calling home these days?  And why are you living there?  And if you’re happy to be there, why so?  Naturally, if you have a blog or a website you’d like other people to know about, share that too.

Looking forward to getting to know you all a bit better!