London Monsoon

Cousin Pey came to visit today from Bath and arrived to torrential rain and flooding. When she called me on her mobile, I was watching the sheets of rain storming down to the drama of thunder and lightning in the dark sky. Rivers of water poured down the street. She was drenched by torrents of water streaming through the roof of Victoria Station and the concourse was awash. Trains were being cancelled all around her.

But miraculously, she found the one train that got her to my suburban station in South London and the rain eased.

By the time we finished lunch, the sun was shining. We went for a walk in the park in our T-shirts, squinting in the bright light. In all respects, it was a pleasant, sunny summer’s afternoon.

It was only this evening when Pey spoke to her husband on the phone that we realised that the rest of London and the rest of the country had not had such a normal afternoon. We rushed online to see the floods that had brought large parts of the rest of London to a standstill (click on the photo for a link to the BBC site with loads more pics of flooding):

The question is: with all trains cancelled between London and Bath, how is she going to get home tomorrow?

Photos: from bbc.co.uk/london