All this week, lines of one song have resonated in my mind : Peter Gabriel's epic, prophetic 'Here Comes the Flood' from his eponymous first album (if you investigate, watch out........the first three are all called 'Peter Gabriel'!).
     'Lord,here comes the flood
      We'll say goodbye to flesh and blood'

   Now more than ever the lyrics of this song seem to hold particular relevance. The tragic devastation in Cumbria , and especially Cockermouth, and the death of PC Bill Barker on a bridge at Workington that was swept away as if it was balsawood, bring home the consequences of global warming.
 
   As ice caps melt and seas rise and our climate becomes wetter and weirder, the biblical references of Gabriel's song match with the statement of Workington's MP Tony Cunningham who claimed it was 'of biblical proportions'.

   It takes me back to the 80's in Merthyr when the then Rhydycar cottages ( since re-built, in very different fashion, in St.Fagan's) were seriously damaged by flooding which caused a culvert to burst. Water destroyed their roofs and one person was killed. A precursor of things to come.

   Only last September, during a spell of storms similar to recent days, the Valleys were hit by serious flooding. I was working at Radyr Comp. near Cardiff and received a message from my wife saying that her school in Trefforest was completely cut off and they were evacuating pupils. Likewise, my young daughter's school in Pontypridd was being evacuated and I needed to pick her up.

   On explaining the situation to a Deputy Head, she replied -'You'd better go and sort out your personal problems!' I was ahgast and told her these were actually 'flood problems'. Luckily, public transport was functioning and I got a train to Ponty. However, the bus-station there was chaotic, with many buses cancelled and we finally got on the slow bus to Merthyr over the mountains. It took one and half hours to get home. In Fochriw, we watched one scally who threw himself fully clothed into a pond created by the heavy rainfall.

   The background of my book for teenagers 'The Climbing Tree', to be published by Pont next February, is one of climatic catastrophe. It envisages a time when rain and flooding dominate the world and focusses upon  two gangs of teenagers who try to cope with these conditions in very different ways. The heroine, called Low, is a Romantic, clinging to an oak above an increasingly bog-ridden Common, along with two friends who are less committed to the ideals of their gang.

                                       LIVING IN TIMES TO COME

                                                                            Every day now
                                                                more so
                                          living in times to come

   beginning with messages
                                late August oak leaves
                                                          falling brown
                                                                       blowin-in prophecies

                                      the rain turns houses to caravans

                               manhole covers sucked up
                                  landslides toppling trees covering railways
                                    roads submerged under a muddy deluge
                                       bridges collapsing like brittle branches

                        this weather weirding
                                                         more sinister

           (we take the slow bus home
                climbing up to the mountain-tops
                   looking down on a chasm of cloud

                              the patterned piles of drystone walls
                                  with leaning blocks in lines
                                       more resolute than many homes

                   sandbags gushed aside
                      like a tide on dunes
                                                           upturned umbrellas
                                                              dead crows on pavingstones

                                   the future rap-rap-rapping
                                       at every pane
                                          to be let in.