Whilst preparing last week's 'Wyenot News', it began to rain. Then came the lightning and I shut the computer network down to prevent damage. Meanwhile, whilst I drank a cup of tea, I stood by the front door of our home, thinking - might as well try and film some lightning during my enforced tea break.

I caught a couple of flashes, but of course, lightning is so unpredictable, aiming the camera where the last flash was, the next always occurs on the other side of the sky. I took about 20 minutes of film to catch just three corners of lightning flashes. I have since watched the unedited footage right through and, towards the end of the lightning film, the telephone call came from Kevin Sale. 'Brookend Street is flooded,' he said. 'May be a photo opportunity'. Tina took the call while I continued filming and, listening back to what I said when she told me sounds very strange now. When given the message, I was unsure whether to go down there.

This was not due to indifference. The Street flooding is an ongoing serious problem but I have photographed floods so many times in the past that I wondered if it was worth doing again - especially as it was raining so heavily, I was behind with news prep and just did not feel like going out. 'Go on,' prompted Tina, 'You can get the story out first'.

Continued . . .

I went down to film the flood, parking the Wyenot Mobile parallel with the high tide line and, filming through the open driver's side window of the car, I got absolutely drenched. I stayed inside the car for the sake of keeping the cameras dry.

The result was, I finished last week's news at around 2:30 am. The adrenaline that working so late generates, always prevents me from sleeping, so I watched an old episode of 'The Avengers' in bed to wind down. At 3:30 am, I finally shut my eyes to try and sleep.

At 7:15 am - after a little less than four hours sleep, the phone rang. It was the BBC, 'Any chance you can be on the radio live in five minutes to talk about last night's flash flood?'
'I'm still in bed and have only had four hour's sleep,' I replied. 'Can we make it later?'
'That's fine. Is ten minutes all right?'

I jumped out of bed, put the kettle on, made some tea and at the first sip, the call came. My mouth felt like the bottom of a bird cage. 'I'll put you on hold and you'll be live with Howard Bentham in just a few moments'. It's a good job the listeners can't see me, I thought. I was wearing minimal clothing - not a pretty sight!

I don't remember what I said on-air, other than that I had filmed the flood water and that it was already live on Wyenot News. 'Wyenot News' was visited over 1,000 times before 9:00 am that morning and things began to get more crazy.

Continued . . .

Later on, another BBC reporter called, asking where the best area to visit was, I directed her to Brookend Street and thought that was it for the day. I tend to try and treat Wednesdays as my 'weekend'.

I needed more tea but we had run out of milk, so I went into town to get some. As I parked, a lady shouted, 'Alan!' Surprised by the call, I said, 'hello', secretly thinking, 'who's that'. She seemed to expect me to know her and I assumed it was one of the thousands of people I have photographed for the news but could not place. 'I phoned you half hour ago - from the BBC,' she explained. I then saw Margaret Lucas, said hello and Central News approached. 'Can we film a sound bite?' Luckily, I always keep the cameras with me and set about taking photos of Margaret and the clean up, whilst waiting for the TV cameraman. Cameraman, John Cherry filmed the sound bite of me talking to Karen Briggs, the Central News reporter. This was all totally unexpected - I had, literally, just gone out to buy some milk!

I got home later in the afternoon and had briefly fallen asleep in the armchair when Phil Kiss phoned to order a print of a photo I had taken at the bandstand the week before. Whilst chatting to Phil, my mobile rang. It was ITN, who had got the engaged signal from the main phone and had rung the mobile number. They wanted me to upload my footage by FTP, to the ITN News computer in a hurry, and emailed me the IP address and passwords.

The whole situation had escalated from a couple of photos and a bit of film of a taxi driver being an idiot that I had shot (and very nearly left out of the final edit). I was in a daze and by the end of the day, totally exhausted by the phone calls and arranging everything in such a rush. My head was pounding and, for the first time ever, I just could not manage staying up to collect Tina from work. Her son, Russell picked her up instead and I went to bed, sleeping for eight hours. I still felt that I needed more sleep next day but had to get my car to Moreton Vallance in Gloucestershire for its MOT by 8:30 and my head continued to pound throughout the whole of Thursday. It was the worst stress induced migraine I had suffered in years, and getting a second early night, I finally slept it off by Friday.

Since the story and film went out on TV, I have not been able to go anywhere without at least a dozen people mentioning it. Out of genuine concern for my well-being and with the best of intentions, they have all said the same thing: I hope you got paid well for the film.

To save me keep repeating myself, I will answer that question here. I got paid zilch - nothing - absolute bxxxer all. It was worth it though to highlight the drainage problems at the bottom end of town and for the sake of the Ross tourism industry! It didn't do 'Wyenot News' any harm either.

STROUD HOUSE . 30 GLOUCESTER ROAD
ROSS-ON-WYE . HEREFORDSHIRE HR9 5LE

Tel: 01989 768320

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