the flood arrives

'every limit is a beginning as well as an ending' - george eliot, middlemarch. 

in bruno's dream by iris murdoch the flood arrives. the stamp collection is destroyed (the basis of patrimony and inheritance). the relationships of the main protagonists are rearranged. it is still not possible to tell where it is all going but it has a lot of the right ingredients for horsemouth. 

horsemouth went for a walk on the common. up to the top of the hill down to the well back by the seats in the middle. he bumped into the sheep (twice) and the ponies (once) but saw no dogwalkers etc. at the well a contractor was working on the drainage from the well and a path alongside it. earlier he could hear some builders were working on the new buildings on the right hand side going up the hill but he didn't see them. 

he seemed to have timed it well. 

in the morning he posted off some tracks he had recorded earlier to rob as proposals for far future village band tracks. they didn't seem to do it but one he sent subsequently did. 

in the afternoon - tea and he read (finishing off bruno's dream). 

the flood that's the thing. it is of course the mill on the floss that ends in flood (but even then there's a chapter after to tidy up lose ends). 

it's an el niño year so horsemouth expects a wet winter (one with lots of rain) and thus lots of floods. this could be a problem for the neighbouring village which flooded twice last winter. for the moment the landscape is still recovering from drought, it is still soaking up the rainfall, it hasn't started running off it yet. 

a passable morning out there. no sign of the flood yet.