What doesn't drown us, and all that...

Great Scott, it's wet in London at the mo.  My advisers tell me it's also pissing down throughout the sceptred isle, but I can't vouch for that.  It's always the way with the weather here: one minute it's as dry as a camel's chuff and the next it's hurling down stairrods and people are fleeing their homes for higher ground.

The rain over the last couple of days has been of that particularly viscose and tenacious variety.  Try as you might to cover up with oilskins and tarpaulins, you are going to get wet.  Getting properly sloshed on, like this, makes one feels weak and brittle.  Also, despite attacking them with blotting paper and talc, I cannot stop my trotters from feeling perpetually damp in this weather.  This is the most uncomfortable feeling available in a largely civilised society.  It's awful.

To add to the discomfort, Mrs O and I are off to Montpelier on Friday for a long weekend.  We've been to the south of France many many times over the nuptial years, and, believe me, when it pisses down there, it's does it with brio and reckless abandon.  So we're hoping against hope that it stays dry on the riviera for duration of our stay.

I remember one trip to Arles a few years ago when the heavens opened and they had 6 months' worth of rain in an afternoon.  Needless to say, the town struggled to cope.  The roof of the train station cracked under the pressure of water.  This shorted-out the lights and information boards.  Not that it mattered much, the trains had all been cancelled as they can't swim.  So that was that.  

Also, we'd rented a down house on the banks of the Rhone.  In the hours following the deluge, the river swelled to an alarming degree.  Huge uprooted trees, cars and the bloated corpses of unfortunate cattle swept past our holiday home for hours on end.  In the end Mrs O couldn't take it any more, and insisted we leg it up the nearest hill and check into a hotel.  This we did.  I had enough French at my disposal to explain that my wife "had fear of the inundations" and "could we have a room in the attic please?".

As it happens, the river didn't break its banks and all was well.  It was touch and go though.

The locals were annoyingly stoical and calm throughout.  They just stood at the flood defences for bit, staring at the maelstrom.  Then they'd have a fag and pull faces at each other.  Mrs O was beside herself at this.  "Who's in charge?  Where are the police, the fire brigade?" she'd ask.  "At lunch, I expect."