They need books at Ted Hughes' old school

The village of Mytholmroyd in West Yorkshire was badly affected by the Boxing Day floods, with homes, shops, businesses, schools and churches inundated by water when the River Calder and the Elphin Brook burst their banks. Burnley Road School, which is situated across the road from the river, bore the full force of the flood and everything in the school, including the library books and bookcases, have had to be destroyed. The school's most famous former pupil was Ted Hughes, the late Poet Laureate and children’s author; in honour of that link, and the inspiration the village and its surroundings played in Hughes' works, it would be great to have the school library fully restocked with donated children's books. Calder Valley Flood Appeal - please donate now.

Mytholmroyd and Calder Valley flooding

Spent Wednesday 30 Dec as a volunteer with Calder Valley Flood Support in Mytholmroyd, helping to deliver cleaning gear to flooded homes, packing bedding for a person flooded out of her home who had secured rented accommodation and then helping to clean up at the Dusty Miller pub, which had been badly affected by flooding from the river Calder on Boxing Day. One theme that recurred throughout the day, from conversations with those affected by the flooding - and this was the third bout in a month - and from other volunteers, was the number of uninsured properties in the village. Some people had simply found that no insurer would offer cover for their homes, while others felt that premiums and excesses had been hiked beyond their reach to deter them from even bothering. A prime example were the couple I met who were forced from their small cottage on Burnley Road, the main road running through the village, on Boxing Day night. Their home has one room downstairs and a bedroom and bathroom on the first floor. From their bedroom window, which was then partially under water, they had watched mature trees and other large pieces of debris being swept downstream with such force that they were amazed there had not been loss of life. They are friends of the Dusty Miller's landlord and are currently staying at the pub as the guest accommodation has not been affected. For their small home, the most recent premium quoted was £1,800 per year, with a £5,000 excess. They had not bothered to insure and now, along with a sizeable proportion of other village residents, now face a costly clean up and repair bill. Calder Valley Flood Appeal - please donate now.

Zut alors; French cops on English streets - a Mail reader's nightmare

Along with 2.5 million others, I managed to catch sight of the peloton as it made its way through God's own country at the weekend. As I left Mytholmroyd train station to walk up the hill to Cragg Vale, the longest continual incline in England, I noticed a line of deckchairs on a grass verge, every single occupant of which was engrossed in the Mail on Sunday. Thought at the time that this was one of those quaintly British paradoxes at work here: a group of right wing media consumers out to watch a bunch of mainly foreign bike riders race past them. It was only an hour or so later that I realised they faced a threat to their well-being from the pre-peloton 'caravan' itself. By then waiting outside the Robin Hood pub, the first outriders appeared, but they weren't British bobbies on motorbikes, rather French Gendarmes or Police Nationale, and they kept on coming, either on high-powered bikes or in minibuses. The platoon of MoS readers must have been driven to apoplexy, I thought. Soon afterwards, I heard the wail of a siren, only for a Mountain Rescue Service ambulance to drive past, down the hill in the direction of the station. I learned later that it was called to treat someone who have fallen off a wall, not to defibrillate a MoS reader who'd been driven to cardiac arrest by the sight of so much French motorised law enforcement. This was probably a good thing, because the ambulance itself was Irish - first aid for the Tour being provided by the no doubt excellently equipped Dublin and Wicklow Mountain Rescue Service - Erin Abu.