Letter from Europe

[Kathleen]

Also Olympic stamps on their way to you Kathleen. Now off to London.

Thanks so much, Barbara!!

[Barbara Nadel]

Thanks so much, Barbara!!

You're welcome

[Barbara Nadel]

Drama and a half! We've had flooding here. A months rain fell in one day and all but the highest mountains and and hills in the Pennines [[Yorkshire, Lancashire, Cumbria) were flooded with water from burst canals and rivers as well as sewerage from the drains. Luckily we live up a hill that is almost vertical from the ground and so we were OK. But the water flowed down from the mountains like a river past our front door - it even had waves! It also lifted up the asphalt on the already pitted and pot-holed roads and my husband just had to rip up what had been lifted in order to divert the water away from the houses. Given the government cuts we're experiencing, it'll probably never been repaired so we'll all just have to drive a bit more slowly [[not natural to citizens of the UK - most of us drive like maniacs). But we were lucky, our friends Warren and Marcus who run a fabulous soap shop over the border in Yorkshire have had their business flooded and lost God alone knows how much money and stock. The loss adjuster is coming today to work out what they can be paid and they're afraid that it will be the usual insurance story where you get very little. They will also never get flood insurance again even though the last flood in that area was in 1987. This also means that the houses on the hills will increase in value while those in the valley will take yet another tumble.

[Barbara Nadel]

Oh, almost forgot, the paperback of 'Dead of Night' is out here in the UK on 5th July as if the first book in my new London series 'A Private Business'.