Claas Kazzer tells us about the floods in Germany on his return from spending a week in Mytholmroyd researching Ted Hughes' childhood.

Sorry about the delay in getting back to you, It's been a rather distressful time, but remember when we were looking at old pictures of Mytholmroyd, with streets flooded and buildings gone? And how I found it hard to imagine such a small river developing such tremendous force and volume in apparently a very short time. And then I come back home, unpacking, trying to settle back in, and then there's nothing but rain, and next thing, whole villages are gone and thousands of people hit by the most tremendous flood imaginable ...

My parents live in a village where two smallish brooks meet. It's about the size of Mytholmroyd just a few miles south-east of Dresden. And my elder sister's family live up the valley from there, in a neighbouring village, and just by the side of a road next to one of those little brooks.

Now, those two streams are just about as wide as half of your canal, and even when they meet, the little river is maybe three-quarters the width of the Calder...

The first thing I heard about the floods, of course, was that just this area south of Dresden was hit. And then there was news of the dam of a reservoir breaking in another neighbouring valley. It got more scary by the minute. So I managed to get through on the phone to my brother-in-law just before the line broke down completely. And he was standing in the door of the house, which has a little front garden onto a the village road, which in turn borders on some grassy slope before going to the stone-set bed of the brook. So there is maybe 10 to 15 metres distance to the brook, and at least a 3-metre drop. It's quite a way away, really. And you hardly ever hear it bubbling away in its bed. But when I called, the water was already at the other side of the road, and he held the phone out of the door and it sounded like an enormous river swishing by, at enormous speed. And it was. Two bridges in the village had already gone, and houses were under water right to above the first floor. You know, there are houses on the other side of the brook too. The whole centre of the village is there. And they were built next to the brook, right on the stone-set bank, which is about 2 metres deep. And this was now acting like a chute, you know ... terrible. It all happened within hours. The water just rose and rose, very swiftly, until this brook became a raging torrent.

And there wasn't much help available since the floods had hit the whole area. Access to and from Dresden along the valley bottom was impossible, with more bridges gone there, trees and debris flooding down it. But then there were places much worse off than that. I think, you might even have heard their names in the British news. In a neighbouring valley, where this dam of the reservoir broke, there is a place called Glashutte, and further down a place called Wesenstein, with a castle and such. Much of both places was virtually razed! Nothing remaining, no road, no houses - just stinking rubble. And the terror and suffering and loss are nothing TV could ever transmit. If you've seen those places and their people before ...

But of course this was only the first part, because when the water levels were already dropping in the smaller valleys the river Elbe kept rising. Very steadily. In the most wonderful sunshiny weather...

And it's been like this all over the south. Near Leipzig, where I live, another river, called Mulde, wasted a huge area and countless villages and cities ...

Luckily my family were not too badly affected. With my sister's family it turned out to be 10 inches. 10 inches that made the difference between being flooded or not. But that's hardly much consolation, is it. I mean, when more than half of the people in the village were severely flooded ...

Now people have begun clearing up after the water and mud. But of course many people have lost everything, and the sight of these places is so disheartening. But there is a lot of support and solidarity.

Of course we are not through yet. Not only does the water not really subside in many places along the larger rivers, it's also heavily polluted with chemicals and wastewater. You know, many wastewater-processing plants were flooded ... And of course it could happen again. This week or next. Or if we're lucky only next year or in 10 years' time. Makes you think, doesn't it ...

It's all too close and I feel I can't really get it into words ... Though, of course it is all related, mind you, even my research. I mean, if you consider that Ted Hughes had been campaigning environmental issues for much of his life.

I am trying to piece together impressions and memories of what life was like in the area during the early to mid-1930s. You know, when Ted Hughes lived here as a boy between 1930 and 1938. And it begins with a lot of seemingly simple questions, like "What did people do with their days in the 1930s?" And especially, "What did children do? What did their days look like?" or "How was school in those days?" and "What subjects were taught and what did they do after school and on weekends?", etcetera.

Apart from the facts I am trying to get a feel for this time, which was very very different from ours, and will be even more distant to future generations. It was a time when 'Church' or 'Chapel' were very much part of people's lives, with institutions like 'Sunday School' for children. A time when a lot of people worked Mondays through Saturdays, when this place was full of busy spinning shops and mills, when there was no TV, and no computers of course. But even the air was different from today. Much more polluted from what I gather. And then there was the tram still running between Halifax and Hebden, and the barges were still operating on the canal. But it wasn't only these kinds of things, which were different. I mean, the whole feeling, people's outlook on life ...

I've heard a story about a local business, Toothill's Bakery, who, according to one account, made fruit-buns which were like rubber, and you could bounce them on the street. Just imagine the laughter and fun, when you have two people in their early 70's in one room who haven't talked about their childhoods together in years, and then one of them just mentions the Bakery, and then they begin tipping each other off just like that and start bouncing imaginary fruitcakes round the room, laughing their heads off. It's fabulous. And it is often things they had thought they'd forgotten for years.

And of course there seems to be an interest in my background in East Germany, too, which finds some kind of mirror in my interest in your local history. So it is a lot like sharing stories, really. For example, after having been in touch loosely for years, Glyn Hughes and I met in person for the first time, and we had a wonderful time down at The Stubbing Wharf just sharing stories. Though I'm not sure the other people there enjoyed our stories as much as we did - we laughed so loud and long.

First, I would like to thank everybody again for the great time I had in Mytholmroyd. And second, if anyone would like to share any further detail as to life in Mytholmroyd as it was during the 1930s, either written or photographs, I would be most interested. This could be something other people might be interested in, too, and maybe a nice addition to the Mytholmroyd.net website - what do you think?