I was too new in the area to know that the English Channel was the best part of three miles from the afore-named railway station — something of a deception on British Railways' part, I thought at the time.

Years later, I moved to the northern part of Durrington (without a beach on my doorstep!).

And in the three decades since, I've come round to believing that, eventually, the Channel will be a lot nearer our home on the hill, although I don't expect to be around to experience it.

The reason, of course, is global warming, and it seems there is more and more cause for concern that low-lying areas of places like Worthing are not the places to be if you and the next couple of generations of your family want a premium view of the briny without actually being in it.

Why am I going on about this in the supposedly exciting run-up to the Christmas forget-it-all?

This week saw the publication of yet another doom-and-gloom article, in the prestigious journal Nature Geoscience.

It says that the sea level will rise this century at about the same rate as it did 124,000 years ago when Earth's climate warmed as our planet's orbit around the Sun changed; that is, by just over five feet.

Apart from the flooding of London and low-lying lands such as the Fens and the marshes of Essex and north Kent, almost every beach in Britain would disappear and millions of people would lose their homes.

The risk of flooding is one of the issues which objectors have used in opposing the proposed mixed-use development on the seafront at Goring, although council planners feel this issue can be addressed satisfactorily.

On a wider front, however, the council's officers say a significant proportion of the town's residential development sites are located within flood risk zones, and there is very limited scope to build elsewhere within the tightly-constrained borough boundaries.

In the comparatively shorter term, the present trend of southern England's rising sea level and coastal "sinking" will at the very least lead to more intrusive sea defences and the loss of some ocean views for which properties might have been bought in the first place.

Yet even a metre-plus rise in sea level would eventually pale into insignificance were we to take on board the message of a development plan prepared for neighbouring Arun District Council.

Citing East Preston as an example, it says most of the village "should be" unaffected by this increase, but in the more distant future, increases of at least five metres are very likely, and "increases of 20 to 25 metres (up to 82ft) are possible".

So, anyone, what are the long-term odds of Cissbury Ring-on-Sea?