Noah's Lark

It was 9 years ago to this very day that it rained. I can remember it very well for a number of small, trivial reasons and two massive ones.

The day started off with the sighting by me and The Boy of a wild deer which was, with no regard to its own welfare, just grazing and gazing within the excavated bowl of the new road junction about 2 miles from our house. How it had got into the inner sanctum was not clear and after our initial wonderment at just having seen such a timid, sprightly creature, we did express concern about how it might get back into its more natural environment farther up the wooded hillside swopping a forest ride for the busy dual carriageway.

We were on the way to the unreasonably early start of a car boot sale at a new venue for us. It had promised well from chatting with other sellers at our usual recreational field pitch. It was in more affluent catchment area, close to a motorway junction for casual passing buyers, well established and popular or so we had been told. It actually turned out to be well away from any population areas, off the main traffic flows, in an old chicken farm and quite a dead loss in terms of actual trade. We had arrived early and were directed by a toothless old boy, the smallholder, to a narrow, claustrophobic pitch even for one outside, right in the middle of an old strawberry field complete with canes and wires.

It was the first sale we had participated at that we had not been pounced upon by dealers and scavengers as soon as we had opened the tailgate of the car. That did not promise much for the rest of our confinement in that place because we were now well and truly trapped by the slow build up of other sellers. There would be no possibility of leaving early even if we felt like giving the whole thing up. The first couple of hours dragged by with only a few pounds sterling to show for our endeavours. My best offering of a Champions League Final programme, £8 from WH Smiths, was looking a bit sorry and curling up at the edges in quite a fierce and persistent heat from the sun and with no respite from any shelter or shade.

The Boy first remarked on some quite magnificent towering cloud structures that had sailed from the west into the otherwise powder blue sky. They were like nothing I had ever seen before, and I had always made a point of commenting on such phenomena with the children and so knew what constituted a noteworthy cluster. Billowing, dazzling white. The occasional vapour trails of high flying passenger jets seemed to punch through the meringue-like peaks which again was something I had not seen before.

We were certainly witnessing quite an unusual formation.

Such was our concentration on the clouds that our entire stock and the pasting table itself could have been whisked away by unscrupulous car-booters and we would not have noticed.

Our meteorological observations made the morning fly by.

Then a gap in our closely packed row opened up as a fellow seller expressed frustration and upped and went and we too made our escape.

The afternoon was to be at the 90th birthday party of a family friend. Me and the Boy were quite radiant facially from a south facing morning and were expecting to attract attention as a consequence from the other guests.

As we arrived at Clarice's house for a garden party the mountainous Cumulus, which had followed us from the farmyard into town were in freefall.

The collapse resembled a slow motion avalanche into a dirty grey full sky cover of rain cloud and with a strong driving wind now developing. The party, momentarily basking in the heat , had to retreat indoors in what became a torrential downpour and with no indications of a reprieve or even a brief sunny interval.

The rain continued for the next 36 hours and developed into the misery of the 2007 Hull flood.

As a consequence of the overwhelming of the foul and surface water drainage systems across large parts of the urban and suburban areas over 8,600 households (20 000 people) were affected. Of these 6,300 people were forced to live in temporary accommodation with over 1400 people in caravans in gardens .

This day, the ninth anniversary of the floods has followed on from a very disturbingly similar spate of weather for much of June. There has been heavy and persistent rainfall most days. The clay soils which form much of the low lying Hull urban area have quickly filled up and as in 2007 it will not take much more precipitation to replicate the flood.

 Lessons have been learned from the events of  9 years ago today .

I am definitely planning on taking a cagoule to Clarice's 99th birthday bash which is in a couple of days time as those big clouds, hanging about for the duration, look a mighty bit ominous.