As someone who lives in the next village to the one that was flooded for weeks in the heavy rains of November 2000, here in Yorkshire, you have my sympathies. It took ages to dry out all the buildings and repair them. All the mess and muck has finally just about disappeared as phase 2 of the improved flood defences has finished, and there are no more lorries up and down the lanes. The cost was somewhere in the region of £5,000,000.

My son has just started work in flood defence with the Environment Agency in Wales, and he is talking about moving out to New Zealand in a few years' time, when he has some more experience. He's hopefully about to start a course on coastal and riverbank erosion at Cardiff University.

Andrea