On 6 Aug 2004, at 17:07, Johanna Kershaw wrote:

And it may give a more cheerful perspective on what I've always  thought of as (one of) the key sentances 'Once you let the water in,  it's got to go somewhere'

But this is an entirely physical statement, and as someone who lives on  the edges of the fens the physical meaning is paramount. I was reading  early in the book last night of 'letting the waters out' between 'Over  and Earith'. That's just down the road from here, and only a mile or so  from DLS's childhood home at Bluntisham

http://www.streetmap.co.uk/newmap.srf?x=538620&y=274685&z=3&sv=538620,274685&st=4

(and zoom in to see more detail).

All this land is regularly flooded to the south of the Ouse (which is  pronounced 'ooze', by the way) -- Ouse Fen. The sluice at Earith, by  the bridge, (arrowed) controls the flow of this water into the great  man-made drainage channels -- the Old Bedford River, and a hundred  yards away, the New Bedford River. These channels tower over the  surrounding land, especially the roiad up from Earith to Mepal -- the  New Bedford River here is a dozen or more feet higher than the  surrounding land, with massive earthen walls to keep the water in.

Upstream a couple of miles, here in St Ives, and back to Huntingdon,  attempts to prevent the river from flooding have been abandoned -- we  have realized, as the book says, that the water has to go somewhere,  and if we restrict in one place it will only come out and cause worse  floods elsewhere. Most winters, the causeway out of Earith past the  sluice becomes impassable, causing major traffic chaos around here  (since St Ives bridge then becomes the only available crossing point in  quite a long stretch of the river.

For those not familiar with the geography of the book, these maps are  quite useful. The reference point in the URL above is more or less at  the southern and western end of the fens, which continue north and west  around Ely (the Isle of Ely) and on up past Alan's villages of Upwell  and Outwell, which are about half an hour up the A141 from here. March,  with its glorious angel roof (presumably Fenchurch's was based on that  at March and the one at Alan's Upwell, and Upwell still has a gallery  on one side, IIRC), is up that way too, so this is very much the  geography of the book. Must get out with my camera and take pictures of  some of these places for the group website.