"GO! GO! GO!........."

This has been one of the wettest winters in at least a year, indeed the whole season seems to have been spent, Nemo like, deep under water. It does seem churlish to complain of floods when one has chosen to live in Oxfordshire - a county of the Thames and its multitude of water meadows, mill brooks, weirs, backwaters and other green and pleasant features sharing, in addition to a population of surly but deferential peasants (otherwise known as Hobbits) and strolling, musing, angst ridden, cash strapped and doomed poets, the adjective "soggy", and yet complain I do. In fact foremost amongst the ranks of the aforementioned poetical gentlemen is the divine Percy Bysshe Shelley a particularly watery poet, not, I hasten to add, in terms of his poetry itself - unless one is describing its effects on the tear ducts of susceptible readers - but with reference to his predilection for mixed skinny dipping, boating and of course drowning. In other words if water in the landscape and in, on and around the people is not your "thing" then you're probably in the wrong place. Even for those of us originating in Scotland, an infinitely wetter (as well as darker, colder, muddier and more unreasonable) country, the recent rising levels and falling downpours have been beyond a joke. For those who doubt my veracity I would direct them to the collected works of Maggie@Abingdon who has magnificently documented the floods and their many sights such as traditional narrowboats and river cruisers amicably grazing with the livestock.

The only respite has in fact been due to the arrival of more water but in a different form ie snow. This had the advantage of being wet in a slightly different way and showing far less inclination to flow anywhere (although it did occasionally drift). Sadly the temperature did not oblige us by remaining quite so cold and the whole lot melted, added itself to the stuff already vaguely in the river channel and abracadabra! floods again. Nevertheless the news that further snow would be arriving over the weekend did cause a flurry of optimism at the possibility of a further temporary break from water sloshing over the top of wellies and crunching underfoot instead. Alas it was all a cruel joke. The rain not only continued to fall but fell heavier and if anything wetter. No merciful fluffy blanket of white crystals shrouded my grotty garden, instead the ancient clay that makes up the infertile soil of this edge of our settlement turned a little more liquid, a little less like soil glug.....glug.....glug

And then it came!....The snow! All night it fell but in the morning up came the sun and all the crisp, clean snow turned to slush. The ground's too wet, the cold's not cold enough but the snow kept falling...and melting. This afternoon Jake and I got home and as soon as I turned off the ignition there wasn't a giggle from the non existent deity insubstantially not existing above the grey snow clouds. Jake and I looked at each other and then back out the windscreen where the snow had suddenly intensified, blurring the street into a swirl of colours. Forty feet. Forty feet between the car and the front door. Forty feet of unprotected open space before the fumble for keys, the throwing of my weight against the painted plywood skin of the door to release the old jamming lock and then the sudden giving way as it swings inward and Jake and I collapse into the warm, dry sanctuary of our messy little house, tripping over the stacks of books that form the cultured obstacle course between us and the us shaped grooves in sofa and adjacent dog bed. "I'm waiting...", the booming, cruel voice of the fictional god didn't say, "Come and get it you miserable little atheists" he didn't continue. Decisively I swung open the door. Looking into Jakes eyes I saw an answering reflection of both my fear and my defiance. Together we burst through the car door and into the hail of not at all deadly, mildly unpleasant globs of rainy snow that the imaginary sky fairy wasn't unleashing from the metaphoric barrels of his snow cloud flooring. Forty feet to go. In slow motion, a Mariachi band blaring a tragic accompaniment in my head, death not waiting for us in every step, "GO! GO! GO!....."

[fade to sepia]