Oh no, not more rain!

Ooh er missus, we have heavy rain again today. Jan, who is normally the voice of doom and gloom as soon as there is any change in the weather, is taking it all in her stride. Whereas I get pissed off because I have to keep going out to empty the pool, and get soaking wet in the process. On top of that, Floyd and some friends are supposed to arrive this afternoon for a few days tennis and I know that I'm going to get blamed for the weather.

***

I don't normally mix the words 'cricket' and 'interesting' in the same sentence unless I want to say something like: "I find cricket as interesting as knowing that orthotetrachidecahedrons describes the shape of a bubble in beer foam." However, England and Australia are playing cricket at the moment and the current match decides who wins the series (best of five). The matches so far have been exciting, (I realise that a non cricket fan will find this incomprehensible) with some nail biting finishes. England are currently in the lead at 2 matches to 1, for the first time in a thousand years or so, and about to win back the Ashes (don't ask) and knock the so called best side in the world (the Aussies) off their self satisfied pedestals (sorry, Phil). We shall see.

***

What an afternoon! I set off at 14.00 to pick up the boys from the airport and little did I know what was in store. It was pouring down as I approached Nîmes and the first sign of potential problems was flood water, a metre deep, on the outskirts. Added to this minor skirmish, a car had broken down in the deep water and had been abandoned. The rest of the journey was very, very wet, with poor visibility, but fairly uneventful. I got to the airport, and it was still pouring down, but I could see no plane. As I was running late, I reckoned that this was not a good sign. I subsequently learned that, having made two aborted attempts at landing at Nîmes, the plane had been diverted to Perpignan (Montpellier, which was closer, had been shut down due to the poor weather), where it managed to get down at the second attempt. Scary. OK, inconvenient but not the end of the world. The boys are then put on a bus and driven up the A9 motorway to safety. Not so. When they get to Beziers they find that the motorway is blocked by flood water and accidents. All this time, I sit at the airport because it is easier to wait there than negotiate my way home and back. To make matters worse the cellphone network starts to play up and it is impossible to get a line, so I have to resort to calling Jan at home, from a payphone, who relays messages to Floyd by landline, to find out what's happening. Eventually I realise that they will not make it to Nîmes so I start to wend my weary way back home. I should have guessed that there was fun ahead because the entrance to the motorway had been blocked off. Bum. I set off into Nîmes by the back roads only to find that road after road had been blocked and I was in the middle of a traffic gridlock. There was no way back and no way forward. I won't bore you with any more, but suffice to say that I eventually got home at 21.20, seven and half hours after first setting off. Jan, bless her, had made a nice curry and had a chilled bottle of wine waiting for her little intrepid traveller. I slept well last night.
(At least you don't live in New Orleans - Ed.)