Luca... and rain

Heavy rain started overnight and it's continued all day. I picked Luca up early, as Ruth had a training course to go to on her normally-free Friday morning. We spent a very contented morning together. At one point I gave Luca a little fruit bar snack, and the bag it comes in also contains a card with pictures and some text on it.  This one had seven lizards on it, with the digits 1 to 7 arranged - not in numerical order - on the card. To my amazement, Luca read all the numbers accurately. This was lovely to see. He did it twice, so I could see it wasn't a fluke. Apart from that we had a riveting discussion about what happens to water when it goes down the drains :-)  Luca's boundless curiosity never fails to cheer me up.

By the time I drove Luca home, around 1 p.m., local roads were beginning to flood. Sheffield has five rivers, and the city centre is like a bowl almost surrounded by hills.  So floods can be hard to prevent.  Today's image shows the River Don at Neepsend, about 15 mins' walk from our house. We got over to Ruth and Josh's house, and I left soon afterwards, realising that getting back home might become difficult.  I circled around the city's  edges, staying away from the obvious spots that flood easily (like the dips under railway bridges). That worked all right, after a couple of u-turns to avoid deep water.
Meanwhile, Richard's been trying to get home from London. All rail services have been stopping at Nottingham, because of flooding in Derbyshire. So he got a far as Nottingham by mid-afternoon, and then rang to say he was sharing a taxi to Sheffield. With luck he'll get back by early evening, though the driving conditions are horrible.
Otherwise, as I write I've had the BBC radio 4 news on, and I despair at hearing that the Rafah border is still not open to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza. Apparently there are disputes between Egypt and Israel about security issues. Of course, if the Israeli government delays for long enough, many Gazans will die of hunger and thirst.  How are Israel's western allies standing by and allowing this collective punishment to happen?  We need pressure for a ceasefire, and for urgent aid to be provided.  Statements from UN organisations are becoming more and more desperate.