Ah, here is the posh end of the street in which I have my country residence - not for nothing is it called River Terrace. But all the snow and rain has swelled the Great Ouse to the point where it has overflowed into the meadows of Eaton Ford and into Regatta Meadow, from where best to watch the rowing races in the summer. Today, near the end of winter, the sluices are wide open and the river, normally slow and steady, churns through, about as attractive as cold cocoa in a food processor. The Blonde and Lucifer are staying with me for half term and after our tour of inspection we went to Caffe Nero, where a scooter club had gathered outside, and to the local bowling alley, where we were in the next lane to the Filthingtons, a family of chain-smokers whose adult members were surely strangers to birth control and whose junior members are surely future recipients of Asbos: they had to be slapped and scolded (though not by me - you can be had up for that) to stop them purloining our bowling balls and lobbing them down the adjacent empty lane just for the hell of it. The bowling alley is on two floors and we were upstairs. As the Filthingtons - an afront to the NHS's entire public-health effort - loitered, waiting for us to finish our game, I toyed with the idea that they could be transported to the lane directly below and that I could somehow drop the heaviest ball available though the floor and scatter them or - better yet - score a direct hit on Ma Filthington's head, pushing it into her chest cavity, Tom and Jerry-style, and leaving the fingerholes on the ball resembling the circles of a pair of surprised eyes and a mouth. Fantasy, fantasy, fantasy.Afterwards, the short drive to Gumster, parking on the quay, and over the Chinese bridge to view the floods on Portholme Meadow. The half mile or so across to Huntingdon was like a lake and very beautiful in the last of the light. Walking back to the car I saw Angus McGob in his Come On Eileen tweed cap and coat, though he didn't see me. That made it an even better day.