So there I found myself. The proud and enthusiastic owner of an old stone cottage in France, beside a gently tumbling water-course. What, I thought at the time, could be more idealistic!

The notaire had assured me, among other matters, that the property was not prone to inondation the French word for flooding. I was slightly sceptical, especially as I was vaguely aware of the local topography. My house is situated at the bottom of three large valleys and the stream that runs right past the house is the culmination of those valleys. From here it continues for a few hundred metres to where it joins the main river, The Tarn.

I started to make a few local enquiries and the descriptions, indicated by the horizontal hand i.e. possible water-levels, ranged from top-of-boot to somewhere above the head. Oh la-la!

I was beginning to be grateful that the accommodation part of the house was on the first floor and perhaps not surprisingly. I had also noticed a small pile of roofing tiles that had been stacked in one corner of the cellar had a thin muddy brown film on them. This part of the cellar has just an earthen floor and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to put two and two…

The first incident was not long after I had moved in, having completed enough improvements to make the place liveable. It was January 2007 and there’d been some heavy snowfall in the hills, some 400 metres up, for the past week or so and then a very sudden rise in temperatures had caused this lot to visit my house.

The normally gentle stream had in a few hours, become a raging dirty brown torrent that was threatening, not just the building but my garden. The main problem was that the water table had risen enough to cause percolation in the earth floor of the cellar and I was wading about in a foot of water with all manner of stuff, buckets of tools, bottles etc. floating haplessly around in a chaotic, even comical jumble, not that I was in the mood for laughing much at the time.

Thankfully it all abated after a few hours leaving me to ponder my position; could I sue the lawyer? Probably not. Could I build a protective barrier? Hmmm, probably too expensive. I decided that if I could store things on shelves in the cellar, I would have to live with problem like most people in this predicament do.

Anyway, I told myself, this is a rare occurrence...

Not necessarily.

It was about two years later that there was a re-occurrence, this time worse and totally unexpected. There was no snow - anywhere. Okay there had been some rain but not a great deal. The stream, although a little dirty, was behaving itself. No reason to worry, unduly.

I awoke the next morning to an horrific sight. The stream had burst its banks and my house had, to all intents and purposes, become a boat. Water was running everywhere. My mind went back to the man with his hand indicating somewhere above his head. Even the precious water pump was under threat and whilst preparing to disconnect it, I whispered a silent prayer.

Now I’m not a particularly religious person but I kid you not that, almost immediately, the waters started to recede. This, I have to admit, had me re-thinking my ideas about the possible existence of an entity much bigger than myself!

Then there are the times during really cold weather when I have to drain the system to prevent the pump from cracking from ice expansion as it had done so on one occasion. Luckily, Gilbert, a saintly man who supplies the winter firewood, came to the rescue with his extensive knowledge of welding and a great believer in what the French refer to as “system-D” or to put it another way, “where there’s a welding torch, a hammer or a spanner or preferably all three, there’s a way.”

Ahhh… The pleasures of living near water! You might think that not having to pay for your domestic supply absolutely excellent but there are times when, well, I wish I had to, but for the most part, it is truly a pleasure.

And, if you have been, thanks for reading.