Not affected by floods myself, but glad to hear late last night that my little brother** and family, who live only a few miles from Thirsk, which was badly damaged, are OK.

As I said, I was not directly affected myself, but I was working behind a bar in North Derbyshire on Sunday, overworked in steam bath temperatures and humidity (and suffering from the act playing in the pub; a "boy band", you know what I mean, high nasal tones, affected American accent "And here's to you, Mrs. Rabbinson", and I was starting to mutter comments like, "This band has been together for three years, it's time their b*ll*cks dropped") when the storm hit. I had to rush into the beer garden to rescue and put away some of the furniture, and that rain *stung*, it came down so hard. On the other hand, it was a welcome relief for a whle, to be drenched with cold water.

The bad news for the UK is that many of the homes flooded on Sunday would never before have been considered to be at risk of flooding. No doubt the owners will be compensated, but we can all expect house insurance premiums to rise. Call it global warming or whatever, but Britain does seem to be experiencing an increase in violent weather in the last few years.

(Glossop, where I live, has been hit twice with "once-in-a-hundred-years" floods in the last decade. However, this estimate as to how often such floods can be expected, was made by the water utility company, who reckoned that there was no need to undertake expensive works to protect the local sewage system. It is possible that a measure of optimism and cost-consciousness crept into their calculations. At any rate, they have been laboriously installing new surge drains for the last year.)


** I say that my younger sibling is my "little" borther, but he tops me by an inch.