We received 26 millimetres of rainfall in Rye in the whole of January...compared to a normal level of seventy. This made it the driest January since 1997...and the previous fifteen months the driest in the south-east since 1976. But last Sunday the heavens opened and more rain fell in a 24-hour period than in the whole of January. In this time the gods dumped thirty nine millimetres onto our ancient towne. This was followed by a week of almost incessant rain.

It was bitterly cold on Friday night with the easterly wind howling straight into the cockpit when I got back to the boat after Ryesingers' performance of Gilbert & Sullivan's Iolanthe. It seemed rather extravagant to light the fire so I decided to do a hardiness test on myself. Woolly hat, pyjamas, dressing gown, sleeping bag, eiderdown...out they came...the more togs the better. In the morning I was reminded of a forgotten age before central heating when windows were single-glazed and the frost made lovely patterns on the window panes. Back in 1956 I would watch my breath from beneath the blankets before bracing myself for the rush into my short trousers and long woollen socks.

A couple of years ago when my son was visiting from Vasteras in Sweden My son takes after his Uncle John and doesn't believe in arriving early at airports. So the timely departure I insisted upon was treated with some disdain. This story is for Nicholas John. This morning when a recovery van was sent out to help a broken down lorry on the London to Cambridge motorway it burst into flames. This is the motorway that feeds traffic into Stanstead Airport.

The fire brigade declared that the gas cylinders onboard the recovery van constituted a serious public hazard and brought East Anglia to a grinding halt by closing down both carriageways of the M11. There was an eight-mile tailback and hundreds of people missed their flights from Stanstead. Of course this had to be the day that the Stanstead Express was suspended for track maintenance. Murphy, always watchful, knows a good chance when he sees one. The replacement buses were caught up in the traffic jam. The road was finally deemed safe for traffic on Sunday morning. This could only happen in England. On the continent all maintenance and accident clear-up activity is geared to getting the motorway reopened as quickly as possible. Goodness knows what objectives the Highway Agency works to but it is nothing as obvious as this.

Here in Rye a few years ago we started to notice American tourists walking around swigging at bottles of mineral water. We thought they were crazy. Tap water is 10 000 times cheaper. Now everybody does it...and it is even crazier. The bottled water industry produces as much greenhouse gas as the electricity consumption of 20 000 homes. Twenty billion bottles a year find their way onto supermarket shelves in the UK...and a quarter of these plastic bottles are parachuted in from south-east France six hundred miles away...before finding their way into our landfill sites. The bottled water industry seeks to justify itself by proclaiming that their bottles are using 30% less plastic than ten years ago. Big deal. The only dim light on the horizon is the promise from a company calling itself Belu of a biodegradable bottle made from corn that composts in ten weeks. Well that's alright then.

It was just as well that I tested my resilience under electricity-free conditions because when I returned from the Saturday night party after our second and final performance of Iolanthe the stove refused to fire up...something that happens perhaps 1 in 20 times. It didn't help that I ran out of firelighters. I was annoyed with myself about this because earlier in the day I had decided that I was living dangerously with arctic bizzards on their way and the wind swinging round to north so bought myself another 25kg sack of coal for £7.25p. Goodness knows where my supplies of Maxibrite originate. Back in the days of the British Miners Strike there was much talk about the street children of Bogota being rounded up and sent to work down the Colombian coal mines. But I have heard very little about this since. Comments please.

Now I am back in Rye I am taking my free East Sussex County Council computer hour every day (except Thursdays and Sundays) I leave to walk into town at eight and after collecting my post I take coffee at Jempsons Coffee House on Cinque Ports Street before making my way up to the library which nestles next to Rye Church at the top of Lion Street. The church opens its doors at nine and the libary at nine thirty so most days I spend a quiet ten minutes or so in the Church. The ladies who run the place are getting to know me...and ignore my presence. I listen in to their conversations. Today the talk was of a trip to see the bluebells in Herstmonceaux. An annual pilgrimage. And coming up in a week or so's time.

All this rain has done wonders for our local reservoirs. Darwell is up from 68% to 70% full. Powdermill is up from 80% to 95%. And even Bewl Water in Lamberhurst...the one the water companies always talk about when putting up their prices or imposing yet another hosepipe ban...is up from 37% to 42%.