Speculation, Fact and Fiction

It's been rather damp hereabouts lately. No, we're not flooded ourselves, thank goodness. We live half way up a Cotswold, so if we're getting wet feet, it's way past time for building an ark. But according to Local Knowledge (husband, lifelong local resident) this is the worst flooding hereabouts since 1972.

Witney was cut in two till yesterday afternoon. If you saw our local MP, Rt Hon D Cameron (Con) sploshing about in his wellies on the news, that’s Bridge Street, Witney. Yes, the clue’s in the name. That’s the town’s one river crossing.

A posh new ‘waterside development’ on one bit of what used to be farm land just by there had to be evacuated . Aquarius, they called it. Everyone who’s lived here for more than 20 years called it flooding waiting to happen – and were amazed that planning permission was ever granted!

So getting around locally was an utter pain over the weekend. Pretty much all the local routes to the north, south, east and west of the town were cut in multiple places so diversions and dithering mean the main/unflooded roads were clogged solid with traffic. That was the case on Saturday when I tried to give my father in law a lift to the shops – we just gave up and went back.

Consequently we abandoned the family plan to go and see the new Harry Potter film on Sunday. That would have either meant a trip into Swindon or Oxford and neither idea looked sensible.

Thus, I wrapped up the week's work on Saturday morning and then sat tight reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (£7.99 in Waitrose, thanks very much). Which meant the title did kinda finally make sense. And I enjoyed it very much overall. Job well done and the whole saga nicely wrapped up with some satisfactory shocks and surprises along the way, as well as the occasional warm glow of 'aha, I guessed right!'.

And yes, of course, I did go straight to the back and read that bit first. Which answered all the most pressing questions but bar one clue, didn't address any of the most tantalising ones. Which may well be why that bit was there, thinking about it. To deal with the likes of me.

Sometime, I must go back and read all seven in order straight through. Um, looking at the current schedule, I'm thinking sometime in 2010...

Life's getting back to normal now. Bridge Street in Witney is re-open and one can get back into town. Mind you, the common is a featureless plain of water, instead of nice stretches of grass between two modest arms of the river Windrush and an ancillary stream, the Madley Brook. The supermarket car park is still mostly flooded to about six inches, as is most of the width of the road that separates it from the river and the common. And the whole centre of town smells like a marsh-wiggle’s armpit.