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There's the difference, you see. While other bloggers on this site were catching bream, chub and gudgeon on the rivers, I decided to go piking at Dobsons. I'd found it hard to sleep last night thinking of a swim I knew, with snags to the left and an overhanging tree to the right that screamed pike. I arrived in the back end of pouring rain to pop up a shad on one rig and flat-bottom a mackerel on the other: whichever proved the most irresistible, I'd swap and have both rods pulling them in. However, four hours on and I'd not had a touch. I'd swapped swims and witnessed a couple of lure angler walk past on the bank opposite me. One disconsolately tossed a single cast and immediately caught a jack pike mere feet from the bank, before nonchalantly chucking it back and moving on with his mate for more prolific areas. Pah. i consoled myself that dead-baiting was the only route to the big 'uns. Another hour passed until the inertia was broken when a bailiff turned up. 'Can you get hold of any wellies?' he asked, nodding at my ankle-height boots. 'Well, I've got some at home,' I said defensively, wondering whether this was some kind of foot fetishist. 'I see. That is your car over there?' he said, pointing at the only vehicle in the carpark other than a monstrous 4x4 'Err, spose so', I said, expecting a slant against its age, dirtiness or both. 'OK, only I'm not sure it will get through the flood,' he informed me, rather helpfully. We walked the 50 yards together to the one exit from the car park where a breached stream had flooded the area to a cold water depth of well over a foot. 'Ah,' I said. 'I think you might have to take the lid off your air-box,' he said. He might as well have asked me to conduct surgery to remove an arteriovenous malformation from the brain. 'Air-box?' I quizzed. 'Flip the bonnet,' he said. I flipped the bonnet. He pointed out the air intake of my 2010 Mitsubishi Lancer, and commented on its comparatively high location under the bonnet. This transpired to be a good thing. I was glad I hadn't brought the Maserati. 'As long as you don't create a bow-wave, you might be OK,' he suggested. 'But get water in there, it will destroy your engine.' I needed to get home. I had a date with Mrs S in the pub, and what's more Christmas was only 30 hours away. I gingerly revved the engine, shut my eyes and engaged first gear. ... I made it through, somehow. It did leave a tide mark of trapped leaves high up on the radiator but crucially just below my elevated 'air-box'. Lovely people, the Japanese. Suddenly a blank wasn't quite as bad as it had seemed as I spluttered down Muddy Lane to the safety of the M4. I type this after the afore-mentioned date with Mrs S and a Thai curry. In true angling style the horrors of the day have been filed away, the record deleted and I'm excited about a trip to the river tomorrow.