Sandbags and Gladrags

Agreed, it has been raining cats and dogs for weeks, and agreed that we live 30 metres from a river, and there are currently some exceptionally high tides and the river Arun is very high, but with no Flood Warning in place for our humble abode, why do we suddenly need sandbags? That Nice Lady Sandcastle Builder decided yesterday to go to Travis Perkins in order to satisfy her paranoia about being flooded. “What if all the experts are wrong?” she said as she braved the squalls to fill some bags full of sand, later to be posted by our front and back doors. Of course now they are just another hazard to be negotiated (unsuccessfully) as I discovered last evening when I stumbled and fell across the wretched things whilst trying to gain entrance to our back door. This is not a euphemism for anal sex, but as I dabbed away the blood, I craved something. I think it was revenge.

I had been diligently working away, toiling over the foreign exchange markets and comparing rates to ensure than those offered by Currencies Direct are the keenest, and was exhausted, partly because of the folly of staying up until 4am in the vain hope that England would at last put up some kind of a fight against those irritatingly perky Australians, who are dismantling the English cricket team more and more, day by day. It was time to be allowed back into the house, but I had to negotiate the massive sand dunes that the Lady Captain Paranoia had created in front of the back door. My office (shed) is placed in the garden, the furthest distance from the house that it is possible to be, due to the “total mess you create with your so-called working”. I am however usually allowed back into the house after dark, as long as all work is left behind in the shed office. This is very difficult to achieve when one is working constantly, so I have to pretend that I am not working when I am.

Clymping Beach at high tide yesterday

There is something majestic about extremely bad weather and the near hurricane force tempest in which we found ourselves at Clymping Beach, was certainly the strongest and scariest wind I have ever experienced (and those familiar with the output of my bowels when under pressure from half digesting baked beans will realise that I do not speak lightly here). Almost impossible to stand up, That Nice Lady Decorator was twice nearly blown off her feet but I am made of sterner stuff (or as she would have it “too much stuff”) so was able at least to stay on the ground. There are clearly some advantages to carrying a little more weight, something I have been able to do very successfully over the festering period.

The day did not get better.  In the first attempt to make me a little more wind-blown (sic), A diet day was decreed for me. There was another reason for that decree; That Nice Lady Decorator had some old school friends in town coming to visit, and, as they wanted to cackle and drink and reminisce, and they needed a sober driver to pick up from stations etc, I was appointed chauffeur in chief to the raucous rowdy rabble who were once all at school at Ackworth. It was a school to their well-heeled parents, or a bohemian den of iniquity, sex, alcohol, drugs and debauchery (if any of the stories I heard last night are true) to the pupils.  As I write, I have had to step out for a sit down to collect my thoughts, and salvage what little I can of my previously naive belief that school days were all about work and exams. As a state school product, it was to me. God, how I wish I had been a boarder.

Chris France