The Power of Water

Write what you know, they say. Actually, I don’t believe it. I’d go with “write what you can imagine.” But sometimes experience can be a spur to the imagination. There is a scene in my latest book, COLD IN THE EARTH, due out on Thursday, 7th November, which was inspired by my own experiences living in Wales.

One was a time, not infrequent, when the Teifi used to flood, helped along by blockage of slate waste in the gorge downriver. The multi-arched bridge at L:lechryd, just up the road from me, was totally consumed, no one stupid enough to try and cross it (I hope). We just stood and watched as Nature took over. Flooding happens on flood plains. That’s why they are there (something town planners seem to ignore.)

Just upstream from Llechryd bridge is the old Manordeifi church (later replaced by one built well away from the water. It came equipped with a coracle stored in the porch, in case parishioners found themselves trapped by floods.

Perhaps more significant, as inspiration, was something I experienced about 10 or 15 years ago. In my little North Pembrokeshire hillside cottage, I was treated to a flash flood. A very brief Niagara-like downpour, probably extremely local. No one died. No one was hurt or needed rescuing. I tried taking pictures on a really naff phone camera and here is one shot, but it doesn’t begin to illustrate what happened.

Our garden, on a hillside, is terraced. So it’s never going to disappear completely under water. But what the downpour did, for 20 minutes, was turn our garden into one spurting waterfall. I saw it gushing at the end of the garden where there are steps, and I donned Wellington boots to go and see if the water I could see spouting out like a dam overflow was real. I was wading across grass that was underwater up to my ankles in places, and I could feel the pull, wanting to sweep me off my feet.

It was roaring down from our lane, too, and might have pushed its way through our front door, except for strategically place barriers we put, very hastily, across the path.

Twenty minutes later, it was over, the sun was out and all the gravel in the garden was piled up by the bottom hedgerow. We spent a couple of weeks shovelling it up and taking it back to the paths and terraces where it belonged.

What I remembered, when it was all over, was the rapidity, out of nowhere, of the whole thing, and the power of that water dragging on my feet and ankles. And that was just a tiny little flash flood on a hillside in Pembrokeshire. I watch, with mesmerised horror, the overwhelming floods in Spain and elsewhere, and I can only think of the impotence of our arrogant convictions that we are in charge, when faced with the overwhelming power of totally indifferent Nature.

It was my own very humble experience of the power of floodwater that inspired a single scene in Cold In The Earth, and, to be honest, sparked the entire book.