This email came in from Chris this morning. The photographs made me feel sick to my stomach.

Thought your blog followers might like to see the latest battering up at
dere ol’ Dawlish; it’s horrendous at the moment, quite as bad as the
“night to remember”, and I just hope there’s no more damage – still an
hour to go till high tide, and the wind’s gusting 90 mph, and coming
full on to San Remo!    Oooooo..errrrr!  The windows are rattling – yes,
even our double glazing rattles under extreme pressure – and, sadly,
there is now a bit of damp coming though downstairs in our bedroom, only
showing as damp patches on the ceiling.  I’m proud to say that my
special patent irrigation system I set up originally, consisting of a
large plastic funnel, lots of polythene, and a big bucket, all in the
cupboard above my side of the bed,  is working!  Water is clearly
gathering and dripping into the bucket !  Nice to know my idea worked,
but obviously there must be other places where the damp is getting
though for the patches to be there.  Oh, well. I expect a hosepipe ban
next week!  Hopefully by the time you open this, the maelstrom will have
abated somewhat. Not too sure about shopping with your Mum in the
morning, though.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

They went shopping.