HERE is nothing quite like two feet of water in your front parlour to tell you who your friends are. And your enemies too. So as Beggarsdale struggled to recover last week's floods, the Dunkirk spirit emerged in finest fettle.

Apart from one incident, that is, which now seems quite funny.

As the rains began to fall and the beck and the River Beggar began to spread huge puddles across the road, Cousin Kate the postmistress was about to set out to Mar'ton.

There, she planned to give a piece of her mind to a local builder who, having contracted to build a new storeroom behind the shop, started the work some three weeks since and then disappeared without trace.

Phone calls, faxes and letters went unanswered so Kate decided to beard the builder in his lair. But just as she was setting out in her ancient Ford Consul, the beck and the river joined hands - in the middle of the road.

Kate slowed almost to a halt and moved over to the right hand side of the road, where the water was shallowest. She was beginning to plough through when a white van came hurtling down the hill at top speed. Kate had no choice but to pull over into the deeper water, where her engine promptly drowned.

This annoyed her more than somewhat but the fact that the occupants of the van could be heard laughing their heads off made her positively furious.

Owd Tom, emerging from the post office with his pension, had observed this sight and he held up his arms and stood square in front of the van. The driver now had no choice but to pull over - and into two feet of muddy flood.

"You silly old b........," shouted the driver but Tom went to the door and said with a submissive beam: "Sorry, mate, if you go any further, that'll never get back. Ah suggest tha park over there until the watter goes dahn a bit."

He pointed to the Beggars' Arms car park and the men reluctantly followed his suggestion because, as it turned out, they were the missing builders from Mar'ton here to re-start work on the post office store room.

They parked up, lifted out their tools, and disappeared behind the shop just in time to miss Cousin Kate as she swished her way back, her wellies full to the brim and her coat and skirt soaked. "Where are they?" she demanded of Tom in a state of cold fury.

"Shush," said Tom, pointing to the parked white van and winking. And sure enough, the water, having surmounted the steep camber in the centre of The Lane, was now flooding towards the car park like an incoming tide. Whenever we get a bit of flooding, the Beggars' car park is always the first to go under.

So Kate let them work for the rest of the day before sacking them. By that time, the van was in three feet of water. That night, the builders had to be rescued by boat, and their van was later found a few hundred yards downstream, lodged against a big rock. No-one noticed its hand brake had been released.

Strange how it got into the river, for the water that flooded the Beggar's never gets that deep. Was it mere coincidence that later that night when, in fishing waders, the Bull and Yun' Tom, two of our fit young men, floundered into the flooded bar and were given drinks on the house?

* The Curmudgeon is a satirical column based on a fictitious character in a mythical village.