'My shop has been destroyed'

By Jenny Matthews
BBC News Online in Boscastle

Tim Lamin owns the Rocky Road art shop, one of the buildings at the centre of flash floods which tore through Boscastle on Monday.

The area remains so potentially dangerous he still has not been allowed back in. But he has assessed the damage from outside.

Mr Lamin's shop was badly hit

"We've lost the whole front which is mainly wood and glass," he said.

"It'll have to be re-done. The carpets will be gone, the floor will need re-laying. Everything's going to have to be stripped out and redecorated from one end to the other.

"Plasterboard walls, division walls, things like this - they'll be gone."

Business lost

He estimated £10-15,000 of stock had been destroyed in a total flood loss of £20-30,000. Some of that amount would be insured.

But that was not all: "We normally earn 40% of our annual income in this month and another 20% in September," he said.

"So this has taken 60% of our income for the year, because there's no chance of opening again before the end of September.

"We'll maybe get it fixed for Christmas, but there's no point in opening in January anyway."

As soon as we're allowed to, we'll start picking up the pieces Tim Lamin

Mr Lamin was not in the shop himself when it flooded. But two female members of staff were and it was full of customers. All escaped safely.

"We got the phone call to say 'Water's coming in and now the water's smashing through the doors' and apparently it all happened in less than five minutes, from almost zero to waist-high," he recalled.

"We heard the two ladies were fine - that was the main concern - and we heard the water was roof-height.

"There's nothing you can do about it. As soon as we're allowed to, we'll start picking up the pieces."

In a cruel twist of fate Mr Lamin had come to Boscastle after fleeing trouble in Zimbabwe, where he had lived for 35 years.

Aerial photograph: See the part of Boscastle hit by the flood.

Enlarge Image

Hoping the shop would act as a sort of pension, he opened at the beginning of 2003.

Despite joking "I feel something's aiming at me" he was remarkably stoic about his misfortune.

"You get a little bit numb but I'm resigned to whatever happens," he said.

"We've been through so many things before and you don't worry about it."

Mr Lamin may be philosophical about his own loss but what really upset him was the damage done to the village as a whole.

"The water course has gone and that's all got to be rebuilt. The sewerage, the car park, the infrastructure around that makes it a tourist spot, has gone.

"But you've got to be resilient. You don't give in just because you've lost something. You've just got to focus on what you're going to do to fix it."

He gave a short laugh: "And you've got to look at the advantages - we won't be paying any income tax this year, that's for sure."