I’ve promised it, so I have to deliver. This is the story of ‘Kate’ and ‘Leonardo’, Mrs W and me – no parentheses needed, for we are indeed they.

The scenario is this… Two couples have decided to spend New Year on the Norfolk Broads. Little do they know they are about to come up against the immense power of meteorology; a grumpy fishing match in Norwich; and the incredulity of a celebratory crowd at the otherwide perfectly hospitable Coldham Hall, across the river from Brundall.

One couple is the Williamses. Tick.

The other is ‘Kate’ and ‘Leonardo’. We shall call them this because at the time they were incognito, which is not to say undercover, which they often were. ‘Kate’ was a burgeoning young professional and ‘Leonardo’ worked under her. Leave it there. They were together, but not yet publicly as t’were. To have made the national papers in the event of some major natural disaster would have been an embarrassment, shall we say.

Fast forward. They’ve been married for ages now and have two wonderful kids, so what of it?

Hard to remember who’s daft idea it was to spend New Year on the Norfolk Broads, but if you look at the picture to the left, you can probably guess,

In his defence, he would probably say he had no idea Norfolk would be battered by the highest tides since 1953 over the New Year period.

And he would probably have hoped the boat we came to know as ‘The African Queen’ didn’t belch black diesel smoke every time we fired up the engine. Ok in some places, obviously. Not in the middle of a fishing match at Norwich Yacht Station. There’s only so many ways to say ‘sorry’ as you chug by at four miles an hour creating the fog of armageddon behind you, desperately trying not to snag a host of fishing lines snaking out from the bank as you go.

There were other minor snags along the way – like not being able to get under the bridge downstream of Carrow Road. It did, however, mean we could listen to the Norwich v Newcastle football match on the radio and hear real cheering from the stadium while we moored up for bacon butties.

And there was New Year’s Eve at Coldham Hall, across the River Yare from the boatyards at Brundall. Here we were christened ‘the boat people’ and we first witnessed a phenomenon known as Broads River Level and Skirt Height Synchronicity.

The first law of BRLSHS is this: Once off the boat in your tight black skirt and high heels, the height of the hem required to get back on the boat in the early hours of the morning when the river has risen and taken the boat with it, rises in proportion.

Rivers have high water marks; skirts have giggle lines (the point at which, if you’re safely past, you’re laughing). Needless to say the levels were respectively well past both.

Some would have taken this as an omen of the ‘Don’t try taking this tub anywhere near St Olaves’ variety. Needless to say, we ignored it.

St Olaves nestles around the River Waveney and the ‘New Cut’ which is a kind of canal short cut that avoids a lot of the windy bits heading north.

We moored up just upstream from the bridge, across the road from The Bell pub. We disembarked and headed off for a tour of the village and decided we’d eat in a restaurant up the Beccles Road towards Yarmouth. And, it being technically, actually and literally the last night of the trip, we thought we’d posh up for it.

Best laid plans and all that…

Someone forgot to let the tide out. So it backed up. It backed up over the boatyard lawn, then over the seat on the boatyard lawn. Which would have been interesting in itself, without the blizzard…

The fact that the boat was starting to list to one side because one of the mooring ropes had by now become twang-tight and that we were forced to hack at it with a kitchen knife in the face of horizontally blown snow to save ourselves probably set off our sense of deep foreboding.

The guy from the river authority in the Range Rover on the bridge did try to cheer us up with an offer to take us off the boat if it got ‘really bad’. Presumably that would have been when the river came over the top of St Olaves bridge, not just right up to the bottom of it.

As the river rose, the temperature dropped. We huddled around a torch for warmth, staring in glum acceptance that the the well-stacked booze box on the side was destined to remain unmolested on this, our own night to remember.

Eventually, though fully-clothed, we went to bed offering up a prayer that come the morning we weren’t adrift somewhere off Rotterdam.

Amazingly, we weren’t. And what’s more, the river level had gone down to a level where we could at least slip the mooring lines. It was still chucking a blizzard mind, and we had to head back to the boatyard in Brundall. The boat’s windscreen wiper was, frankly, laughable.

There was only thing for it – and that was to despatch ‘Leo’ onto the bow of the boat, armed with a broom and protected largely by a ludicrous hat with earflaps, to keep the windscreen clear.

The snow had actually stopped by the time we reached the boatyard and we were able to chip ‘Leo’ off the bow relatively easily. Then came the task of unloading ourselves and our luggage across flooded pontoons.

Herewith a huge nod to the ox of a boatyard attendant who piggy-backed us all to shore. No mean feat that, bearing in mind we were still wearing most of the clothes we possessed and the fact that some of me are generally a bit slimmer now…

As we sat in the Little Chef unpeeling ourselves and enjoying four early starters and steaming coffee we allowed ourselves the contented smile of the survivor. Blissfully unaware of the odour we were creating after a day and a night in winter cocoons.

“You’d have sworn this place would be busier,” we thought as we left. It was, very soon after.