'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe

This time I got two phone calls back-to-back from the Environment Agency's autodialler: a flood alert for Fareham to Portchester, and a flood warning for Fareham specifically. The gist of it from their emails is:

Sunday afternoon's tide at 12:30 on 29/09/2019 is higher than normal due to unsettled weather with strong South Westerly Force 7 winds and large waves. The weather increases tide table values by 0.3 m (surge). The forecast tide is 5.38 metres Chart Datum (2.65 mAOD) at Portsmouth. For 1 hour either side of high water, the tide will exceed the top of the slipway at Lower Quay, flooding a small number of properties. The road, at Wallington Shore Road, will also flood. Until Tuesday (01/10/2019)‚ tides are high enough to cause minor impacts at each high water. The largest impacts will occur on this tide.

Probably not quite enough for me to have a moat, but it'll be close...

A moment ago, I thought I'd head out and see just how high the tide was.

The sea's not yet reached the road outside the flats, but it does look decidedly choppy. There's a couple of hours to go until high tide though.

Then I headed the other way, meaning to go towards where I took the photos last month, and got maybe fifty yards beyond the shelter of the buildings before almost being blown over by the full force of the storm. It's really windy, as in brace-yourself-to-stay-upright windy. And I don't fancy being caught in the open if an even stronger gust arrives - there's no shelter at all along this bit of path.

I think I'll just stay here instead :)

We have a washing machine here. It makes for a good washer/dryer, apart from the occassional leak. So far it's failed to drain due to a clogged fluff filter, leaked all over Dom's floor (twice!), and refused to use any powder (so we have to use tablets).

This time it surpassed itself.

This time it failed to drain. Period. And of course the door locked itself and refused to budge, which is understandable considering the drum was a third full of water still.

The fluff filter was not clogged (as we found out when the landlord came around with a suitably hefty wrench to loosen it after it got overtightened by mistake), and this time we caught the water before it could flood Dom's room again. So, drain water out the fluff filter hole, inspect fluff filter and find it's lacking in fluff, screw filter back up and run a spin cycle to dry the clothes out a bit (having verified that the door now opens)

Washing machine makes a few half-hearted attempts at spinning, mainly due to the load being a bit unbalanced, all the while failing to drain any more water. So we stop it, run a drain cycle (which now unlocks the door) and I extract the clothes to discover half an inch of water still in the drum.

Flick it on drain cycle *again*, and it hums away merrily while completely failing to drain. So we now have a washing machine that while it will wash, and it will spin, it won't drain. Hmm.