Dulwich : Not Twinned with Watchet

This blog must be being read by GOD since no sooner had I put "Floods" on my list of agreeable items, than the best floods for years occurred. I thank the Lord.

In blog Headquarters in West Somerset London is popularly believed not to exist, but 2 of us went there at the weekend and it was all full of LONDONERS.

Kind Dulwich-dwellers urged us to stay with them because floods were forecast, but we would not be deterred: we must needs drive home through the night of savage downpours, and sure enough we had a SUPERB journey back from London, as there were floods of really generous extent. The roads between Bridgwater and here were uncommonly enjoyable, being all very flooded, and we had to keep turning round to find alternative routes.

This was the first place where the water was too deep for us to get across. The weedy puddle shown here is as NOTHING compared to how it was when we reached it the night before. Giant lorries were being stopped before the might of the torrent.
Unfortunately by the time this picture was taken even Private Light Goods vehicles could be driven through it.

There were magnificent water levels everywhere and we drove through countless new-made fords and along roads that had become riverbeds. The police were completely overwhelmed by the scale of events. Motorists were all helping each other and on the roads a rare camaraderie grew up - unlike the hostile atmosphere in Watchet, where we got trapped. There the inhospitable people closed their doors on us, nursing their pints in their cosy after-hours lock-ins and laughing cruelly as we were turned back out into the everlasting rains. Should a Watchet-person ever find himself trapped in Blog HQ he might reflect on the wisdom of this night's work. 

Having been despised and rejected, we went and dozed in the car for a few hours while we waited for the waters to recede a bit. By a circuitous route we reached home at 6am after 12 marvellous hours on the road.

With some surprise I must say that our Vauxhall Heap did sterling work throughout. This car is 15 yrs old with 1300000000000 miles on the clock and has led a hard life, never being kept in a garage or cleaned or pampered with 10000-mile services or any other such luxuries and every year it is a source of utter astonishment when it gets through its MOT. Yet it did not falter during a journey with which the VW Enzyme of my early driving career would definitely not have coped. Like the enzymes it was named after, that car only worked within a narrow band of physical conditions and packed it in every time they strayed minutely from the required values. pH, atmospheric pressure, humidity, pollen count, temperature, wind direction (easterlies were DEATH to it): all had to be at precisely the right alignment or it would conk out immediately.

Vauxhall! People of Dulwich! We salute you!             Watchet; Volkswagen; - You we do not salute.