I don't know

I don't know what to say this time.

I thought I knew a bit about flooding. When we lived in our little Yorkshire village I stood on a midsummer night and watched the water reach further and further up our garden - and it didn't matter, because the house was high up. I was more concerned about what was happening on the other bank of the river, where it had overtopped the wall. The next mornin, everywhere we went there were carpets, heavy with mud, draped over fences.

Twice that summer the waters rose and fell again. Water doesn't have to be in your house for long to wreck everything it meets and short out the electricity. It takes months for the damp to be fully cleared up. Some small businesses never reopened. A friend gave up trying to sell her house - a sweet little house in a pleasant wee square, but who would want it when it had flooded twice? And what would the insurance be?

Now think of all you've ever heard or read about the West Country in the UK and the Thames Valley. The typical English countryside settings. Think Midsomer Murders, Miss Marple, Inspector Morse. Think Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy, Elgar, Daphne du Maurier. Think 'Three Men in a Boat'. Miles and miles of those beautiful areas have been underwater for days, even weeks. The water is standing, and must be foul by now. The drainage systems can't cope. The trains into Cornwall aren't running. Villages are cut off. Farmers are fighting to get to their livestock, because this flooded countryside is - or was - good farmland. It's orchard country, too.

Here in the north, which so often gets the rough weather, we're relatively untouched - except York, which is prone to flooding, and hasn't had it so badly. But say a prayer for the people of the South-West tonight.