Nobody’s fault.

Goodness, how it has rained.

It was raining when we woke up, so heavily that we could hear it bashing down on the trampoline outside even through the double glazing.

The dogs were dispatched into the garden for a preliminary empty, and then were affronted on their return to discover that they were too wet to be allowed to join us on the bed for coffee. In the end a large elderly dog-towel was employed, and they were reprieved. They leapt up on to the bed and fell instantly and deeply asleep, exhausted with their unexpected shower.

We drank our coffee and gazed out of the window with the sort of comfortable horror that comes with looking at a wetly devastated world whilst being warm and dry oneself.

We were still doing this when the phone rang, and it was the lodger. She was walking to work, because of all the roads being flooded and there being no taxis.

Our camper van, she informed us, was sitting in the middle of a newly-formed lake which had risen as far as the door sills and was still rising.

We got up.

The camper van was parked just alongside the Library Gardens, and the puddle had indeed reached the sort of proportions which might cause it to qualify if not as a lake, then at least a tarn.

Since Roger Poopy ate Mark’s flip-flops I was the only one with suitable footwear to wade across to it, and so I had to grit my teeth and paddle through the icy, muddy water.

The flood, whilst high, had not quite lapped in over the sills. It appeared that actually there was no danger that it would, as the water had reached the highest point in the road and was beginning to wash away down the hill.

However, although this disaster had been averted, not all was quite as it should be. As I looked I discovered that the little triangle window on the passenger side had come open.

This was Mark’s fault because he has not got round to glueing the catches on to these yet, although I have told him about it lots and lots of times, and he still hasn’t done it.

I knew he would be feeling bad about this and so I hardly mentioned it at all when we discovered how wet everything was.

Every car that had gone through the puddle had sprayed about twenty gallons of water at the camper van, forcing the window open, and then sloshing it in all over the dashboard.

Even though it was Mark’s fault for not fixing the catches, I hardly said so at all.

We had to move the van.

Of course, we wouldn’t have had to do this if Mark had fixed the window catches when I asked him to.

We manoeuvred it cautiously out of the lake and chugged around to the alley at the back of our house, where Mark mopped the dashboard and the seat, and I lugged the dehumidifier out to it.

Whilst all of this was going on the rain had slowed to a patter, and finally stopped for the clouds to part and a beautiful warm burst of sunshine to melt through them.

The world steamed.

We put an apologetic note to our neighbours in the windscreen, and Mark thought that since the weather was so lovely, he would fix some of the gas jets on the fridge and the cooker.

I went to bed, because of the headache.

I am very pleased to announce that when I woke up for work, the headache had dissolved away like mist in the sunshine.

There is no nicer feeling in the world than not having a headache, and I have been positively joyful at work this evening.

The camper van is almost dry.

Not that it’s anybody’s fault, these things happen.