Ashes

Today I was meeting a friend to watch some Ashes cricket at the St Lawrence Ground in Canterbury. I was late setting off and was due to get there at midday; I knew that play had started when I left so on I went. It was raining here but I reasoned that it was fine further east so it would all be okay. However, as I got close to Canterbury, on the A2, I ran into the storm and it was truly Biblical. Lots of forked lightening and thunderclaps and visibility was down to a few feet because of the driving rain. I was crawling along the A2 but worse was to come as the drains were struggling to cope. I rang Kate and suggested that I pick her up and we'd go and have some lunch as it seemed unlikely that play would continue for a while.

Along Old Dover Road I was following a bus which was creating a very impressive bow-wave. My last-but-one car died in a flood so I wasn't overly happy about running into the large pools gathering behind each sleeping-policeman. Kate looked like a drowned rat when I picked her up at the ground - she'd got there in time to see two balls bowled before the umpires took the teams off because of bad light; when I got there water was cascading down the steps at the entrance. A little further along the road water was gushing a couple of feet in the air from a manhole cover in the centre of the road.

We sailed round Canterbury to The Goods Shed at West Station. The last time I was there was 5 years ago and it was a farmers' market with some eateries - that blip is also cricket-related; it was a cricket trip and we were recovering from drinking from damp glasses the previous evening. Now it still sells some scrummy produce but there are more eating opportunities and all the food looked tremendous. We dined in the restaurant which is a raised area along one side of the hall - hence the angle of this shot. The light through the archway on the loading bay has deceived the sensor on my phone; it was far from that bright.

There didn't look to be much future in spending £20 to go into the ground and Kate wasn't sure she wanted to hang on to see if play resumed so I took her to Ashford as that would offer more trains back to London. The rain had stopped but there was still a lot of standing water and lots of places where traffic was stopped so that cars could alternate using the centre of the road to avoid the deeper sections.

So I didn't see any cricket but had a lovely lunch. The weather was simply an inconvenience for me but had far harsher consequences for some folk; the local news have been showing flooded businesses and at least one house gutted by fire after after a lightening strike. The claim is that 3 month's worth of rain fell in 9 hours!