Here we go again

Jeez after days and days of heavy rain we’re back to the incessant, omnipresent all-pervading roar from the river. Sure, nature on the doorstep, yes wild and savage, of course better than trams and cars but day in day out, no, it’s too much. You open the door and roaaaar, close the door and roaaaar which during the day amongst other sounds might actually not really be there but you’re still convinced you can hear it. But in the silence of the night it’s definitely there and like that joke about the guy with the bump on his head living next to Niagara falls you wake up and your brain ask itself what the feck that horrible roaring noise is, answers itself before letting you go back to sleep again for an hour or so until it wakes you up again with another question (roaaaaaar).
Then, too, our little stream, or torrent as it has now become, adds its boom booom boboom to the underlying roar indicating that it might be wise to perhaps move the car to the other side of the bridge. The thudding of the torrent you can actually feel in the house and we’re a couple of hundred yards away from it. Constant, disquieting.
Last night the river was still quite low pitched but this morning it has risen and as the pitch rises it gets more and more ominous and threatening associated in many people’s minds I suppose with the disaster and death of 2008 the year of the landslide. It’s not a friendly sound. Last night they closed the Bertenga bridge.
And it keeps raining. You can tell when we’re reaching dangerous levels as the land behind the house can’t cope anymore and water comes pouring out of the patio wall which it has been doing since last night. A couple of the cow byres have veritable rivers coming out from under the doors and the woodshed (wet-weather cat toilet) is flooded with smelly catcrap floating around amongst the logs and sticks. Lovely. So today I’ve been busy digging channels and trying to get as much water as far away from the house as possible and generally getting lovely and wet and hoping things don’t get any worse.