It
has been one of those worrying days. Our
friend Beverly was grizzling on Facebook about having returned from South
Africa to a very wet Narbonne. Today one
of our part-time neighbours posted some photos, then a few video clips, of the
Orbieu in spate. In the 24 hours to
10:00 today, the river had risen by almost four metres, and the flow from an
already healthy 20 cubic metres per second to close on 300. It normally hardly registers on the measuring
devices. I saw the warning signs on the
weather forecast a few days ago: when a clockwise weather system meets a
widdershins one in our part of the Mediterranean, it means strong water-laden winds
off the sea. Not only does that lead to
huge cloud formations over the Corbières, the Montagne Noire and the Pyrenees,
but it also greatly slows the rate at which the rivers, notably the Aude (of
which our perfidious Orbieu is a tributary) and the Agly can empty into the
sea. Said Orbieu rose and took a stroll
through the ground floor of Château Smith in 1999, a year almost to the day
after I bought the place, and about two months after I’d furnished the ground
floor. Well, the rate of flow has
dropped to a merely diluvian 170 m3 per second, and the level has
fallen a metre from its highest level this morning. I wonder what tonight will bring.
The
Agly at Rivesaltes is above its 1999 level, and the whole P-Os départment is consequently on
red alert – immediate danger to life and property – spare a thought for the
poor souls affected. Lagrasse has not
risen above its orange alert status yet.
Not that there’s a lot one could do about it from here in any case. As I’ve mentioned before, we can monitor the
situation in something approaching real time on the vigicrues.gouv.fr web site. At one point I simply had to go out and
endure ordeal by Fortnum’s and Sainsbury’s, simply to get away from the on-line
graphs.
So
it’s odd to be in leafy Disgustedville and able to walk on the grass – well,
here and there – without sinking into the mire, for the first time since
autumn. But rain is forecast, so we ain’t
out of the waters yet. Here or There.
A
phone call from the grocers this afternoon confirms that they are willing to
take on the financial risk of banking us, so I just need to pop in tomorrow, sign some bumf and
flash a driving licence, and we shall soon be free of the egregious RBS.
2 comments:
Fingers crossed - for the water level in France and for your new bankers. I used to change mine every time they upset me, but it all got to be too frequent so I have done a lot of grinning and bearing, as well as gnashing of teeth in private in recent years. What, by the way, was HMG doing opposing the EU's inadequate cap on bonuses? Unfortunately, not trying for something more robust.
Waters subsiding, bank gearing up. As for the bonus cap arguments, I think HMG argues that it fears losing work to the Americas and Asia-Pac. (Remind me who you are some time, by the way.)
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