The big melt

Weather warnings across the South West not to drive, and I don't hear about it until I'm out in the car, you know, driving. It's clear that water has whooshed down the roads overnight, leaving huge mounds of leafy, twiggy and branchy detritus. The gullies are roaring streams and the river is just contained within its banks, having subsided from the surrounding fields. Everywhere water. My twenty year old Puffa, without even the vaguest memories of waterproofing, is quickly soaked through, and I keep warm if not dry, by hurling soiled straw out of bird huts into the wheelbarrow as quickly as possible.