What I learned when a ‘once in 100 years’ flood hit my city – 10 years after the last one

Flooded fields in Oxford after Storm Henk hit. Photograph: Toby Melville/Reuters

My dad lives on a boat. Despite the earrings, tattoos, missing teeth and bare feet, he is not a pirate – just a man with an expensive divorce and a public sector job, living in one of the most unaffordable cities in the UK.

This month, his mooring in Oxford was hit by the kind of flood described as “once in 100 years”. Except the same thing happened 10 years ago. And three years before that. All along the same stretch of water.