Walking to the station, by the riverside. The sky is a beautiful winter blue, with only a few (very pretty) clouds. The river is angry though: the level is high and the current is fast. Just by Reading Bridge (one of the two bridges across the Thames in Reading) there's an Environment Agency monitoring station, with a very big LCD read out of the amount of water flowing past. The display has been obscured by graffiti recently, so I haven't been able to tell what the flow rate actually was. It wasn't even graffiti really, just some kid colouring in the display so it looked like the first digit was an '8', which seemed unlikely, because in the summer the rate is 9 or 10-point-something, and an eight at the front would make the flow eighty-something. Someone had cleaned the display this morning. The flow was 86-point-something. Like I said, the river is angry.
I walk along the river path to get into town, so I see the flow rate quite often. I'm sure it was in the high teens just a couple of weeks ago. Related: I watched a Coot (small black-and-white water bird) chasing off a couple of Canada Geese (easily 6 times the size) on that bit of the river yesterday.
On the station platform itself, the woman sat next to me waiting for the delayed train (doors on one side wouldn't open, pick your platforms carefully...) was reading a delicately sized 60-page Tatler magazine cosmetic surgery guide. Her expression was slightly guilty, slightly defiant.