A rough night

As King Lear had it, a naughty night to swim in.  You might gather that I'm not referring to the amount of alcohol consumed but to the weather.  We were promised winds of 70mph at exposed headlands along the south coast.  I don't really think our house would generally be thought of as being on a headland, exposed or otherwise, but it certainly sounded as though the wind was pretty near that speed.  Shoreham port recorded 55.8 knots - about 63mph - so perhaps it wasn't far short of the predicted speed up here.  There was plenty of rain as well.  When I was up the Waterhall valley on Sunday afternoon I noticed that the dew pond was about as full as I have ever seen it and the one at the top of the Wild Park, which I passed this afternoon, is close to overflowing.  The sky appears to be darkening as I type - which doesn't augur too well for this evening's bingo.

I am, once again, on bingo duty at a block of retirement flats just over three miles away.  When I am on duty I try to leave home 20 or 25 minutes before the session is due to start.  That has, in the past, always proved to be enough time for me to drive there and set up the bingo in good time for the 7.30 start.

Not last time.  I left, as usual, at 7.05 - and it took me 35 minutes to drive the three miles!  That time it was simply the volume of traffic.  I started by taking my regular route, which involves driving into the city centre and then heading east parallel to the sea front.  As I was heading down the hill to the city, I tagged onto the end of a queue - which I could see stretched a mile.  I turned rtound and took the alternative route.  But I had forgotten that the council, in its wisdom, is making "improvements" to a large gyratory system - which no member of the general public wants or expects to make for safer driving and cycling.  However, the roadworks only made my journey longer, hence the 35-40 minutes to drive three miles.

The time before that I gave up all together.  That evening I sat in a queue and after ten minutes realised that the only reason I was slowly edging forward was because other drivers were turning round and coming back!  I did the same - and tried the alternative route, which was just as bad, so I gave up and came back home.  That time there had been flash flooding down in the centre as a result of heavy rain.

So, will I or won't I?