Aunty has the Bulldog spirit!

That meant she was about eight miles away from her home in a second floor sheltered flat in Beauchief.

After she had completed her 90 minute work-out, she walked to her usual bus stop in the torrential rain. After waiting just over an hour and becoming literally wet to the skin, someone in the queue, who had phoned home, informed her that there were going to be no buses that day or any day soon, as the River Sheaf had burst its banks. Neither was there going to be a taxi or any other form of transport.

So naturally she set off to walk home...

The further she got , no matter which way she tried to climb hills to avoid it, the water got deeper and deeper. What could she do but carry on?

At junctions that she had passed on the way down on the bus where she had noticed road-works, she was not able to see where they were. Some manhole covers had lifted with the force of the rain and she had to take extreme care not to fall down any of these holes.

She hoped that by Abbeydale cinema she would be able to make detours to higher ground. Unfortunately she was even unable to do that as the road was completely flooded.

By Millhouses Post Office she thought her troubles would be over. This was where the young man had been swept away to his death, by the Sheaf as it burst its banks.

Then she was confronted by an army of policemen and emergency services personnel.

A kindly policeman showed her how to take short little steps 'as if you were walking on top of the water' so that she created as small a wave as possible through the knee deep water. As she arrived at Abbey Lane, the police were again out in force, and as she waited patiently to cross the lake that by now was the junction, another bobby spotted her dilema, and came to her assistance, and escorted her across flooded Abbeydale Road.

She finally reached home two and a half hours after leaving the Peace Gardens and managed to drag herself upstairs to her flat.

She stripped off her clothes and made a cup-a-soup, and a tin of rice pudd' and woke up in her armchair four hours later.

She decided it was too risky to have a bath in case she fell asleep and then died of hyperthermia, so she went to bed...

We all thought, meanwhile, oh Carrie will be OK she lives in an upstairs flat above the water.

When I spoke to her the following day and told her she was my heroine, she said: "I think you mean heron!"

Then she said: " I don't think I'm going to go to keep-fit today."

She also points out that she was born under the appropriate sign of Aquarius, on February 4, 1927.

The bulldog breed. I'm very proud to know her.

John