A Flood of Thoughts

It is the greyest, wettest afternoon in a very long while. It's not just the sheer quantity of water falling from the sky — that is something quite common at this time of year here — but the amount that is unable to flow away because it's high tide. The old canal, widened at huge taxpayers' expense, has proven unable to fully cope. It's still a big improvement over the days of my youth though.

I remember that I was still a student when I last waded in hip-deep water through that stretch of the Road. You had to be very careful lest you step on something unpleasant, and you had to take off your shoes so that you could put them on again at the other end. It was very slow going.

Today was not like that. But the subdued light, the resigned-looking motorists, the sad headlamps that might flicker and go out soon — these were known of old. There was an ambulance stuck in the mess. But no amount of civic cooperation would float it across the little lake where even the 4WD vehicles dared not go. I found myself wondering if the person who needed it would be in trouble.

The light was astonishingly uniformly grey. It somehow contrasted nicely with the butterscotch-milk colour of the canal waters. At this rate, iron-tainted aluminosilicate clay deposits will be a thing of the past, and this island will be down to granite bedrock. But I have faith that this won't happen. I know the Patriarchy well: they'll just import topsoil from the Southern Archipelago as usual.