The Bishop of Oxford was at St Helens for a United Service of the churches in Abingdon.
Bishop John has been in the job about six months.
People stayed on afterwards for tea, coffee and biscuits.
Near the end of the service people remembered Rev John Stanbury from All Saints Church, Abingdon, who passed away today after a long illness.
Unusually for a Saturday the traffic was bad in town. It built up soon after midday when emergency vehicle sirens could be heard and some thuds that turned out to be explosions.
The Abingdon Herald reports that two gas canisters at a unit off Blacklands Way exploded.
Colwell Drive and the Fairacres trading estate were closed and people evacuated ( it must have been an unusual first day for the new Pets at Home store with their 10% opening offers).
Twelve fire engines were at the scene. The BBC says the unit belongs to Compact GTL, a new UK company that turns gas to liquids.
Elsewhere, the new path to the lock, repaired since July, was taking a bit of a battering from all the water.
The water level near Abingdon Lock was at 11 feet – a little way below the Jan 2003 high water mark.
There were worries yesterday about whether parts of South Abingdon would flood again because of the River Ock (I note on the Environment Agency web site the River Ock is still only at ‘flood watch’ not ‘flood warning’. )
These pictures are from this morning at about 8. 
Sandbags have been put out again. Supplies are available from near Homebase on the Fairacres estate. This is St Helen’s Mill where the water was rushing against the sides of the building last summer. It has breached the bank a little this time despite the bags. 
For advice about using sandbags watch this video.
The River Thames is high but it affects far fewer properties in Abingdon than the River Ock. The wide flood plain the other side ensures for each inch it creeps up this side, it has to go some way the other side.
The River Ock divides into an upper and lower stream near Tesco.
In some places, the river has broken its banks. The houses in the background are in the Ladygrove Estate which were flooded last July.
Upper and lower streams run close together on the Ock Valley Walk into town, and the difference in level is normally far greater.
In places the walk goes underwater.
They streams come together just before joing the Thames.
The Ock has been on Flood Watch since January 11th.
(Update: it got worse than these pictures overnight into Thursday but no sign of anybody being flooded, although it looks a close run thing in places.)