The water's only just receding from the fence at the bottom of the garden up in Herts after the river Ash took leave of its banks and went for a walk around the countryside - the closest it's ever been to the house.
My son heroically waded through thigh-high water carrying his sister on his back so she could get up the hill to get the school bus (Was she grateful? Was she buggery: Women!), the postman was swept away in the ford and had to be taken to hospital with hypothermia after his van got wedged under a bridge (pillock!), the neighbours nearer the river have three feet of water on their ground floor (they're used to it by now)...ah, ain't life grand.
Meanwhile, in central London yesterday it was actually rather lovely. Hyde Park was closed to traffic because of debris, and the result was a blissful walk to work untroubled by the infernal combustion engine.
Today, after the deluge, is another matter. London is back to its snarling, inefficient self, with trains, tubes and buses few and far between and all of them full to third-world standards and everyone obviously far from gruntled. (which reminds me; I want to sit on the roof of a double-decker with a basket of chickens. I've seen it in the documentaries, and I think it would lend an authentic atmosphere of desperation to London's transport system. C'mon Ken - it's got to be worth a try to wring more money out of the Government...)