After the flood

I set off in a rainstorm. Whether it is, or isn’t, caused by CO2 emissions triggering global warming, I’ve never seen an English monsoon season like this one. From our house, there’s a five-mile-long, single-track lane to negotiate before you can get anywhere. Normally in heavy downpours the water pours into the lane off the fields and lays in one or two low-lying dips. But in this new, more concentrated type of precipitation we’ve been getting, the lane itself is a live torrent.

At least the tempest and early darkness have kept other people indoors by their fires. I meet no other cars. A section of the lane where I’ve never seen standing water is flooded to the tops of my wheels. I lean out of the window and inch forward in first gear, hugging the hedge where I’m hoping the water might be shallower. But instead it gets deeper and starts coming in through the doors. At Sunday School I was taught to give praise and thanks in every situation. Easier, perhaps, for a devout bright-eyed lad than for the 52-year-old depressive bachelor who loveth not, knoweth not God that the lad became. But when tarmac reappears at the far end of the lagoon, I mutter grudging thanks on behalf of us both.

Finally, I reach the main road into town. This road is also flooded in places, but at least these places are preceded by flood-warning signs. Now I can take my nose away from the windscreen and relax a little.

In town I stop at the supermarket to buy flowers. ‘Whatever you’ve done, it must have been pretty serious,’ says the lad on the checkout, as I lay cellophane-wrapped bunches of lilies, chrysanthemums, carnations and roses on his conveyor belt.