THE picture of the 1968 flooding in Redhill town centre that I showed at my recent Redhill: The Diamond Years presentation in the Harlequin Theatre prompted the biggest "we were there" reaction from the audience.
I, too, was there. My wife and I were trying to get back from church on Sunday morning to our house in Frenches Road only to find our way blocked by flood water.
A year later we moved to Redstone Hill and quickly discovered that one of the advantages of living up a hill is that floods are no longer a problem.
They're not much of a problem in the town centre these days, thanks to the culverting of Gurney's Brook and improvements to the drainage, which makes me wonder whether my idea of a way to reduce traffic congestion in the town might be worth considering. When approaching Redhill from the north or west, to drive up Redstone Hill I encounter six sets of traffic lights in the space of a few hundred yards.
But the real problem is the three sets of lights controlling pedestrian crossings at the station roundabout.
With projected retail and residential developments fronting on to that roundabout (the railway station and car park site and the former Liquid and Envy building) pedestrian traffic to and from the town centre using those crossings will increase significantly, causing more traffic congestion.
Eliminating all three crossings would enable traffic to flow much more easily and avoid delays to pedestrians.
The only way of achieving that would be to replace the existing roundabout with a sunken one.
Subways and ramps would provide an uninterrupted passageway for pedestrians to and from all four quadrants.
One objection raised to the idea is the security problems associated with such subways. But they would be much shorter than the existing subway under the railway (the recent recipient of a much-needed makeover), which is to be utilised to serve the proposed new car park east of the station.
I don't know whether serious consideration has been given to the idea of a sunken roundabout. My guess is that it could be ruled out by cost.
But how much more costly, both financially and to the environment, is the energy wasted by hundreds of cars inching their way through our streets day after day?
My best wishes for a happy and, to return to where we started, dry Christmas.
Redhill historian John Capon