Water, water everywhere

Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink. Well, I don`t know where that quite familiar saying comes from, but that was very much the feeling where I was earlier today. I wonder what the origin of that saying is?

Having been out for an afternoon shopping, we drove back and became aware that there must have been a shower of rain, as the road became wet and we saw puddles along the verges. The nearer to home we got the larger the puddles seemed to get, and sand and stones, shingle also became apparent. There must have been a heavy shower we said to one another, - but little did we realise just how heavy a shower we had missed witnessing.

Having delivered a friend and our shopping safely home, I proceeded on to a friends house that I was keeping an eye on this week. Approaching it, I discovered an extremely large area of water lying on the adjoining car park, and around the gate area. No access that way, so I went via the driveway, paddled through the water lying over the path, which fortunately wasn`t as deep as by the gate. As I approached the door, I passed lots of broken bits of shrubs and leaves, a chunk of wood, which once was by the gate, and a trough of plants, which had once been by the front door, was now by the side door - obviously swept there by the water which had flooded around the house.

On entering, at first, all seemed in order, but then, going to pick up the mail, I discovered that it was absolutely saturated with water. Yes, the water had gone into the porch. On to the study, and horror - on my way I found a patch of wet carpet in the middle of the house. Now that was a bit of a mystery, is the roof leaking? I climbed on a chair and felt the ceiling above the wet patch, but no, the ceiling thankfully was bone dry. On feeling the carpet it became obvious that somehow the water was seeping up from below. Then, worse still, on entering the study I saw immediately that the carpet was wet. The darker wet part could clearly been seen covering over half of the room from the window. I hurriedly moved all that I could to drier parts of the room.

Looking out of the window at the back garden, I was astonished to see that the garden had turned into a swimming pool! Not though that anyone would want to swim in the muddy water which was about a foot deep. Still, at least it had watered the very dry garden!