Tuesday started off with a slight precipitation and overcast skies, ended the day with the sun coming out. At the Petit Paris I managed to get a table before 7.00pm and ate their cheap Plat de Jour, there were even people sitting at the tables outside. Summer is here in Edinburgh.

What a difference several hundred miles make. Rosemary rang several times during the day with panic stories about the floods that were about to engulf our home. The water was within 10 millimeters of coming in through the front door. She was unable to get to the DFAS meeting at Westcott where the road she had to pass through had water halfway up the nearby garden walls. Those who did get through had to walk through inches of water to get into the lecture hall and had to contend with a collapsing ceiling. In her words:

I was in work this morning and then had the dentist in Winslow at lunchtime. I was staggered at the water during the slightly scary drive back along the back roads. But I was in Westcott for DFAS just gone 14:00 and it was so flooded (especially at the turnoff just after the derestricted sign) that the van driver ahead suggested I shouldn’t attempt it and we all turned around. I don’t think I’ve ever seen everywhere so flooded. I was a bit worried about our front and the sitting room cos the front garden was very flooded.  I was also worried over the 10 day old lamb in our field.  I couldn’t see him anywhere and feared he had fallen in a ditch and drowned. Risking the elements and suitably garbed, I went out in search of his tiny corpse.  Scattering sheep to all sides and struggling against the suction of the waterlogged land on my wellies, I found him snoozing in a patch of long grass. 

Meanwhile DFAS’s Lecture Secretary says she “had to get the lecturer there! It was certainly bad in Westcott but the car is reasonably high. However, the front entrance was totally flooded and everyone had to go in via the fire exit through 2-3″ water, necessitating a number of people having to take off shoes, and quite a number turned for home. The hall was flooded down one side, a piece of ceiling fallen in near the entrance and we had the lecture in the room past the kitchen! It will certainly be memorable.”

Back to reality and the Petit Paris, good starter of Cray Fish Tail salad and salad potatoes, followed by a Salad Nicoise and then the Creme Brulee all washed down with a binge of red wine.

Ed’s update on floods:  The next day, all visible water has gone from around the house and the sun has shone.  The local rabbits all seem to have survived and I bet the wretched ants have too.