If there's one thing I like to do on a bank holiday weekend, it's to visit a ruined castle...


I think it's the inflatable version of the West Pier. And frankly, with attractions like that on our doorstep, anyone who chooses to go all the way to Bodiam this Easter must be mad.

Anyhoo, I snapped that photo this afternoon when I took Amelie for a long walk along the seafront. Well, I say walk. We kind of half walked and half swam. I'm not saying it rained a lot, but I spent most of the journey trying to remember my tsunami training from the NHS induction course.

The good news is that Amelie's buggy came complete with a PVC rain cover. The bad news is I didn't take it with us. By the time we were halfway to Hove, her cosytoes was more soggy than cosy, and I could have kept a goldfish alive in the puddle on her lap. I had to stop every hundred yards just to wring the water out of her bunny ears.

Anyway, let's just say it was grim. Frankly, whoever called this Good Friday should be crucified. People were so desperate for shelter, they were actually queuing at the Sealife Centre. That's how bad it got.

Against all the odds, however, Amelie and I eventually made it to Western Road, where we took cover in the Shelter charity shop and wondered if we were the only people who could see the joke, before buying some tomatoes in Sainsburys and starting the long paddle home. We eventually squelched our way through the front door at four-thirty, cold, water-logged, and with every chance of starting a flu pandemic in Brighton. Forget global warming, from now on I'm driving everywhere.