Window on the world

It's here, it's started! My brain is buzzing, my heart is full. Can you tell I'm excited? The Henley Literary Festival kicked off this week with a host of writers, performers and literary stalwarts. The festival and I go way back. Ten years ago, when it first opened its doors, it took my hand and said, Stop pining for London - look what Henley has to offer! We've been friends ever since.

Comedian Ben Miller asks: 'Is there life beyond earth?'

For one week in the year, I cram my head with knowledge. It's like I'm making up for lost time - and perhaps I am. My biggest regret from my university years was not attending enough lectures. At the time, bed seemed a more inviting prospect first thing in the morning. In my callow youth I took 'learning' for granted. Now, entrenched in the humdrum world of work and parenthood, I can't get enough of it.

Waterlogged

Rather aptly, a few weeks ago, I started reading Tales from the Ark to my son at bedtime. It turned out to be a fictional prelude to the floods that have beset our little British isle. Thanks to the Old Testament, the phenomenon of flooding still has biblical overtones (for some residents of Henley-on-Thames more so than others). Nowadays, rather than hunkering down in our wooden ark, we take a more combative approach with sandbags, barriers and pumps. As the Atlantic storms buffet our shores, it has become a contest: the human species versus the global weather system.

Living in Henley-on-Thames, I know a few friends and family who have watched the river break its banks and consume their gardens and homes with inexorable ease. Tales abound of heroic rescues, good deeds by neighbours, travel chaos and the evacuation of dogs (and even llamas) from waterlogged ground. Only today a friend told me how her husband had saved someone's new kitchen from watery oblivion by helping to divert some of the flood water in the village of Shiplake. It was celebratory cups of coffee all round!

For all the disruption and misery, however, there remains something oddly compelling about a landscape transformed into a waterscape. Our local bookseller, Jonkers, recently coined a new name for our aqueous town: Henley-in-Thames. Here are a few pictures of the flood, post Noah, circa 2014:

The famous Regatta course expands widthwise

Paddling in the flood

Welcome to the waterpark! Antediluvian pastimes are over. In the era of the flood, there is a new attraction in Henley-on-Thames. Throw on a pair of wellingtons and come on in. The water's lovely! This year is the wettest on record for England since records began in 1910. No wonder we are obsessed with the weather.

The River Thames has burst its banks and is twice as wide in places
Credit: William Lam

Anyone fancy a pint? Of river water?
Credit: William Lam

The famous arches of Henley Bridge are half submerged
Credit: William Lam

Henley's Ark - the bandstand in the park has become an island
Credit: William Lam

Sitting ducks
Credit: William Lam

Steve Redgrave and Matthew Pinsent marooned with only a paddle
Credit: William Lam

Knee-high boots are recommended 

Emma Clark Lam is the author of A Sister for Margot