Michael and his wife, Utta, spent most of their working lives on the Somerset Levels, Michael involved in elvers and eels and establishing a smokery and later a smokery restaurant. Now retired they still live in the same house on the river Parrett where they stayed dry for over thirty years. Until January 2014 when one of the biggest floods ever seen on the Levels inundated their house and several others in the village of Thorney. They were to remain under water for over seven weeks.
