A touch stir crazy ...

... (yesterday it rained solidly all day and this morning's not been much better) we take advantage of a brief break in the clouds to get some fresh air and set off with the dogs to walk the quays in town. The Garonne is only millimetres away from spilling across the cobbles.  In places, we walk through muddy slime - the river has already encroached and, briefly, receded.  The "vigicrues" (flood warning) graph shows the Garonne to be 4.40 metres at 11.45am, on a rapidly accelerating upward slope - the quays won't be walkable for much longer.

We return to find sodden towels in the cottage hallway. Removing his wellington boots and heading for the kitchen for coffee and toast, Tod grumps as he accidentally walks through an invisible puddle in his socked feet.

Water is steadily dribbling from the main electricity cable where it enters the house, collecting in the meter cupboard and then oozing out across the tiled floor.  Sopping towels wedged round the bottom of the cupboard only hold the water back briefly.  I squeeze them out on the lawn outside and feel like the Sorcerer's Apprentice.  The water table is now so high that the ground is saturated and the rain has nowhere else to go except along the sheath of the cable and into the cottage.

We've been here before in wet weather, but not often and not for a few years.  It seems worse this winter and with the sharp upward direction of the vigicrues graph, unlikely to get better any time soon.  I suggest to Tod that for the next few days he keeps his wellingtons on whilst circumnavigating the hall and the kitchen.