Today in a brief interval between rains,we have been building a levee. Only a little one but sufficient to divert the rain water river pouring down our lane from flooding the Beach and out to sea. Needs must. The land slide from the hedge, which was blocking the lane, had to be cleared. So 20 wheelbarrows later we have a clay and stone dam. Eventually Bernard our farmer, the boss of the disappearing hedge, appeared with a massive bucket loader tractor and usefully removed the 200 or so wheelbarrow loads which remained.
I shovelled soil with Trevor our neighbour. He has a property in Florida. Just down the road from him in the USA are shanty towns. Sounds like the ones in the film "Beasts of the Southern Wild." To reduce the rising water levels, in the film, stranded hut dwellers bomb the dominant corporate levee with a crocodile skin stuffed with dynamite. Maybe they were premature. As Bob Dylan sings "If it keeps on raining the levee's gonna break" ( anyway). In comparison with those huge (post Katrina) global shiftings our domestic efforts at Baycliff are of course a mere piddle in the big ocean of it all. We are so lucky. But this downpour does provides a salutary focus.
