It has gone seven-thirty in the evening and I haven’t even written my blog post yet; I’ve been out since breakfast time and came in  just a few minutes ago. It has been such an emotional and busy day that I have not given any thought whatsoever to my subject for today (or tonight), until now.

Now I’m here at my desk considering what to write about? I could tell you that it’s cold and wet outside; we noticed a yellow road sign with “flood” printed on it as we entered our hometown of Dawlish – “What flood?” Chris and I both thought – and then we drove through the floodwater. It has been raining hard for two to three hours – the drains can’t handle sudden downpours. But no, I’m going to write about the state of our drains in Dawlish. Besides, it feels quite cosy indoors, now that the curtains are drawn and the heating is on. The sound of the rain falling onto the roof above me out here in the studio is pleasant and reminds me of childhood, in the early days when we lived in a flat-roofed little wooden house in the bush in Australia. Everyone knows that flat roofs have a tendency to leak – ours was no exception. The heavy drips of rain that leaked through the holes made different metallic notes as they landed  in saucepans, enamel basins and enamel bowls, and lulled us to sleep in spite of the unharmonious sound; even so we managed to feel cosy inside while it raged outside and the roads flooded, and our low-lying back garden flooded. Those were the days, not necessarily the good old days, but we loved canoeing in the garden and catching yabbies (shellfish like prawns) in the streams at the sides of the roads.

My world is so different now; nowadays “cosy” is how I feel when I ditch the Summer duvet for the cuddly Winter one. It seems so inconsequential. The rain has stopped, the flooding down the town centre will soon abate; no children here will miss school for days, or perhaps a week, because they are trapped at home by floods; and maybe they wouldn’t even recognise what cosy means because they have never known anything different. Funnily enough, I don’t feel cosy any more, just hot; my studio is very well insulated, the heating is still on and I feel stifled. I can hardly breathe. I’d love to run out in the rain with all my clothes on, like we did when I was a kid…