The Parish Peasant and the Rain Problem.

We’ve been given the welcome news that Britain has seen the last of the ten-week run of wet and stormy weather, at least for the time being. (I got a bit alarmed last night when I heard what sounded like a commercial airliner going over the house at about 1,000 feet. But then I realised that the sound wasn’t rising and falling again; it was assailing my eardrums in precisely the unwavering manner that commercial airliners don’t.)

Today saw the final grumblings of the latest storm system, and it was, in consequence, an indecisive day. I couldn’t decide whether to go out for a long walk or a short walk, because the sky couldn’t decide whether to leave me unmolested or make a valiant attempt to drown me (probably at a spot about two hundred yards along Church Lane. That’s the spot at which the water draining off the land uphill crosses the road on its way to the river downhill, and there’s been a shallow pond across the carriageway for what seems like a very long time.) And my problem, you see, is that my old winter coat is no longer securely waterproof, being so old that it won’t be long before it will be older than I was when I bought it.

A woman from the village noticed my coat a couple of years ago. She remarked upon the quaintness of the piece of orange fishing net twine that I use to pull the broken zip up and down.

‘It’s quite an old coat,’ I explained.

‘It shows,’ she replied, without so much as a smile or hint of irony.

She and her husband have three posh cars and a damn big house, and she’s the same one who said to me once: ‘You’re not a peasant; you’re too intelligent.’ So c’mon, missus, am I a peasant or aren’t I?

Anyway, in the event I went for two walks – one very short one up the lane to check on the condition of the drains, and then a slightly less short one later when the rain stopped. And that’ll do for today.