A very wet place...

The world seems to be a very wet place at the moment, and full of tragedy.

Over the last couple of months many countries have suffered from severe flooding. These include:

The United States (Florida and North Carolina); Sudan, Nigeria, Niger, Chad, Cameroon and Tunisia in Africa; India, Nepal and Vietnam in Asia; Poland and Austria in Europe.

Deaths have occurred, properties have been destroyed, lives have been ruined.

If we then go back a little further, a year or so, we can see that other countries have suffered the same fate:

Mexico, Uruguay, Argentina, The United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Greece, Turkey, Oman, Georgia, Russia, Afghanistan, West Sumatra…

You name the country and there seems to have been a flood – a tragic flood.

Why is this? Is it climate change? Is it man-made? Is it just the norm? Who bloody knows? I’ll leave it to greater minds than mine to work that out.

But now it appears it’s the turn of the Iberian Peninsula.

Valencia in Spain suffered hugely this week, with over two hundred dead to date, and many more missing. This particular storm is now heading towards Mallorca.

I think that here in Fuseta, we’ve been lucky. Yes, we seem to have been affected by the tail-end of what hit Spain, but some decent rainfall is always appreciated in this part of the world, and there has been nothing too onerous until…

…until Nigel and Amy came and knocked on my door Wednesday afternoon to tell me that they’d come to pick up Nigel’s car (which had been left behind after a few beers a couple of nights before) and to see the flood.

Eh? A flood in Fuseta?!

Yes, apparently Fuseta now had a flood of its own. I hadn’t known anything about this, since I’d not left the house for a day or two due to the rain, and personally, I wasn’t under water.

I now wanted to know more.

‘Up by the roundabout near Crispim,’ apparently.

Well, I never.

We wandered up the road to have a look, despite the light drizzle, but the great flood of Fuseta seemed to have disappeared. Bummer.

The three of us then decided to go for a beer to discuss further, but found that most of the bars were closed – not unusual when the weather here is crap. So, we headed to the campsite. The bar there always seems to be open, whatever the meteorological conditions.

With a couple of wonderfully cold beers and a glass of white wine in front of us, we discussed the recent climatic idiosyncrasies.

There was a TV on the wall at the far end of the bar, which on the whole, we ignored, until Amy said: ‘Look!’

And there it was: the great flood of Fuseta on the National news! Blimey.

We watched in awe, realising that the flood was hardly anything at all, in fact no greater than the high tide that came with the Harvest moon this year. The most likely cause was probably a blocked drain.

I’m sure there were probably more newsworthy items that could have been shown, but this is Portugal, and here, wonders never cease.

The wonder today was that Fuseta had made the National news for a flood that whimpered into mediocrity compared to what has been happening in the rest of the World.

Weird.