Flood waters rise in Sussex

The sunshine lasted almost as long as it took me to get the roof down on the Merc. I am sometimes in a position when in France in winter to use the convertible in the way it was intended, usually on dry sunny days, but never in England before October, when I returned from the sublime autumn weather in France, to the cold and damp reality that is winter in England, have I ever been bold enough to get the roof down on the car in January. It was not my decision, it was the idea of my house guest, the crusty, ancient and magnificent – in the same manner as a monument – Peter Savin. He seems to have no sense of hot and cold as it was barely 9 degrees Celsius when he suggested that it might be a good idea to endure the elements.  It was my duty to accommodate him, so I sat in the driving seat, stoically trying to avoid hypothermia.

It was on the way back from a visit to see the high tide at Bosham, with the sea encroaching so far up the road at the Anchor Bleu that it was impossible to park anywhere except the municipal car park, so high was the tide. The situation had been exacerbated by the ridiculously appalling run of poor weather that abated briefly yesterday, but it appears only for a day, before the storms and tempests resume. Thereafter, we had driven in convoy, still with the top down, through the flooded roads to see how high the tide was at Dell Quay. several times, hige puddles covered the roads, and there was a real danger than some idiot would drive through one of these quickly and flood the car from the top.

Everything had gone according to the plan of my elderly friend, until we reached Chichester. I knew we were in trouble as soon as he caught sight of the rainbow. Yes, it is true, when we set off it was sunny. but the appearance of a rainbow does imply something; rain is around. Luckily, we only got slightly wet, to go with the cold, before the very efficient German engineering was employed to put the roof up, and made us able to look at the other motorists in the same traffic jam on the A27, many of them without the option of convertibility, all looking very happy about their lack of choice. At least they could not make the wrong choice.

High tide at Bosham

But it did not end there. With the girls in the skip. the very smelly 4×4 owned by that Nice Lady Decorator, and hell-bent on some retail therapy at the retail park on Chichester, and with us on our way back to Arundel to collect forgotten items, my dear friend, excited by the fact that it had stopped raining, persuaded me, yet again, to get the roof down on the way to the Mulberry, a gastro pub the other side of Petworth, owned by the ginger entrepreneur and broadcaster Chris Evans. We barely made it before the roof was once again raised, and I dashed into the pub to restart the circulation of my blood.

After warming up, lunch was served and very good it was too. The potatoes in duck fat were not likely to have much positive impact on my waistline reduction programme, to which I had given the nod by ordering sea bass fillets rather than the burger or fish and chips to which my eyes were initially drawn, but they certainly helped equanimity to return. In the pub, I was also drawn to a conversation about foreign exchange but was able to reassure a potential customer that Currencies Direct could help.

Chris France
@Valbonne_News