Starting just before Christmas the river Meon has
been lapping at the doors of HMG Secretary’s house!
We (Alison and John) live right beside the river,
so it was not a great surprise.
Three pumps were working in various strategic places
and were successfully keeping the water at bay.
However, a particularly high surge one night added a
few extra inches to the water level and into the
house it came, to a depth of several inches. This
was discovered by John who went down the stairs in
his slippers one morning and stepped into it!
There is only farmland upstream so the water is
fairly clean. It just carries a certain amount of
silt. For several days a few inches remained in the
kitchen, but with the cooker on a couple of bricks
cooking in wellies was quite easy but movements
around the room had to be rather slow so as not to
create waves which would go into the cupboards!
