WTF (contemporary parlance) Happened?

Hell’s horses! What happened? 

Apologies for going “deep cover” for a few weeks, but once again,

WTF (contemporary parlance)just happened? 

In late April I was dealing with ranunculus that was on the cusp of flowering and pushing water over the banks,

 

where did all the water go? 

Once again WTF (further contemporary parlance) 

I have been falling in and our of this stretch of the Dever for over thirty four years and this was my fortieth season having a go at working on the Test and it’s tributaries. I have never experienced such a rapid drop in water level and have spent most of the season blistering in the sun, stumbling about with my tongue dragging along the floor wondering how it has come to this. 

It goes without saying that we have gravels that are dry and most fish have concentrated on getting through the day, tucking away in shady deep spots in a river that for several weeks began the day at seventeen degrees celsius and ended at nineteen degrees celsius.

Some stretches on the middle and lower river experienced water temperatures in the low twenties, and several clubs closed down for a period. Trees have been under stress and I have had to deal with several that just gave up in the heat. Donning chainsaw gear in such conditions was an experience that resulted in me fitting into evening trousers that have not been comfortable for a decade or more, I know fashion moves on but this was one plus that arose from the brutal conditions this summer, and I briefly considered putting my earing back in and jigging about in a field somewhere with other people, new torch in hand showing off my new svelte form.

 

It was very hot and considered thought was hard to come by. 

Lizards! Waaaaah! 

We have lizards in the garden, little brown ones that are more attributable to the Med. 

I don’t think we brought them back in our case but we have more and more ligging about the place, along with the resident Grass snakes and an Adder that Madam and myself disturbed one hot afternoon.

We have a record crop of inedible grapes (except to the blackirds, who love them),

many lemons on our tree,

and melons thriving in the polytunnel. 

Peppers and aubergines are in rude health, tomatoes are a ball of sunshine, half the size but with an incredibly intense flavour. Potaties are rubbish, beans are quick to go to string and leeks are pencil thin. 

Once again, if anyone chimes up and questions climate change and it's influence on this corner of old Albion, feel free to flick (or possibly punch) them on the nose, clap them round the ears and call them out for the Contrarian that they are, with possible additional further financial interest in it’s continued denial. 

It may not be apparent from guff chucked up by this house, but I have spent forty years in a workplace that is very much influenced by the climate. I’ve yet to see a flamingo about the place, but there has been a Mill on this site for over a thousand years. There have been long periods during the past ten years when there has not enough water to turn the wheel. 

Warming climate, on which we have had an influence, is a thing in these parts,  It’s not some cycle. 

There is a diminishing and to many, invisible, groundwater resource in this corner of South East of England that supplies seventy percent of it’s population. It’s on here somewhere, (ad nauseum – ed) but we need to get more “water wise” with our knowledge of the “old eau” extending beyond it falling out of the tap and exiting down the plug hole. We’ve almost managed it with rubbish and recycling so there’s hope, but maybe a few water shortages and empty pipes this summer could focus minds and the lady with the Croydon facelift from local town society will not rant to the local news camera that it’s her right to wash her car and fill her hot tub, there’s loads or water because it didn’t stop effing raining after Christmas.

 

There now follows a succession of deep breaths by way of balm to an ageing constitution. 

Deep breath one 

Deep breath two 

Deep breath three 

In other news we went away to cool down in Kefalonia. 

A beautiful island, infested with goats, that we have visited previously. We were billeted a hop and a skip from the beach in the small village of Assos. 

Four tavernas, two mini markets a bakery and not much else. It is reached by the most precipitous road that I have ever driven along, which inevitably brought me out in hives. Madam and myself love to snorkel. We both have prescription masks for our ailing eyesight and rise early before anyone else is about, entering the water with a handful of stale bread by way of groundbait. 

It was some of the best snorkelling we have ever done. Crystal clear water with many massive mullet, bass, wrasse, flatfish, octopus the occasional ray, shoals of anchovy, further whitebait plus many that I failed to identify. 

Back home, all appointments have been cancelled as we await the arrival of our first grandchild.  Child A has struggled in the heat but is almost there, further news to follow.

When the Moon is in the Seventh House and Jupiter aligns with Mars

Well what a weed cut that was. 

The June weed cut is historically the heaviest, but this was the heaviest I have experienced for a few years. 

In April we had weed, but because the weather and water were cold, I took the decision just to tickle a few bits up. You will remember that in May we had a late frost, the river was still quite cold and the weed was in soporific order. You may also remember, and this is on here somewhere, that after experiencing a late frost in May the following weekend saw the Celsius in the thirties and my behaviour changing from covering twelve rows of allotment potatoes up, to watering them quite heavily. This period spurred weed growth and in the warm weather prior to the June weed cut, if you sat still long enough staring, an activity that I am increasingly prone to do, you could visibly see the weed growing. 

For eight days my scythe was a blur, several days when the weather topped thirty Celsius I opted for my leaky light weight waders that I normally reserve for salmon fishing and it felt goooooood. 

With the weed cut complete, the weather really warmed up, hitting record temperatures apparently. The temperature under the parasol in our garden nudged forty degrees, and the river water temperature topped out at nineteen degrees. We have many springs that feed into this section of the Dever. Spring water pops out of the ground at a constant ten degrees which helps to keep temperatures lower than the middle and lower river, where applications have been put in to start stocking with Tilapia. 

The river temperature currently hovers between sixteen and seventeen degrees according to my state of the art meat thermometer, at which point I’ll break off because a thought has just entered my head, a practice that I am increasingly prone to do because in less than a minute it will have gone, 

Now where was I? 

Meat thermometer? 

Ah yes, meat thermometer, why are so many kitchen implements involved in the rearing of trout and the management of their habitat? No self respecting salmonid hatchery would be complete without a phalanx of turkey basters for picking eggs and every fish I ever stripped of eggs was done into a cake mixing bowl. 

But that may be it. 

Fishing has been hard. Above a water temperature of eighteen celsiuses salmonids start to concentrating on just getting through the day and like last year we are leaving as much willow to shade as possible. One encouraging development has been the increase in the number of blue winged olives about the place, nothing like the numbers of forty or fifty years ago, but definitely more than the last few summers. Other critters on the up are the ducks, mostly mallard with the occasional gadwall, we have many broods skittering about the place. 

Returning to water news, we’ve had a dearth of the old eau popping out of our taps. 

The water supply to our abode, the main Mill house and a neighbouring property are all supplied directly from a borehole in the Mill house garden. It is sited close to a beautifully constructed brick dome shaped well that is now covered up. Boreholes in the bottom of this valley don’t have to be very deep, we sit on the valley floor, many have been installed on the quiet to water cricket pitches, allotments and horse paddocks, it isn’t a difficult thing to do. 

Our borehole is a sealed affair, the water is untreated and it has made me and my family what we are today. The formidable but kind lady who used to live next door who lived to the age of ninety nine, regularly fell over in her dotage and an alarm would summon me to her side to raise her from her grounding. She always insisted that the reason she never broke a bone was the water she had drunk for a long period of time. 

It is very nice water, Hildon on tap if you will. 

Anyway, three weeks ago something went awry. The pump wouldn’t switch off and the borehole would run dry after an hour, at which point I could go on about “cones of influence” but will refrain, as once again I seem to have wandered away from what I was originally intended to write about. 

We had water for an hour a day and then the pump packed up. All signs pointed to a leak in the system, but this system that I have “some” knowledge of was installed when Archimedes was a lad. Wallahs were summoned and many qualified heads were scratched along with my own, but the conclusion drawn was that until the pump was replaced, no suspected leak could be found. 

These things take time to to fix and while we could get by with bottled water and showers at chez Child A, future grandchild A progressing well by the way, my polytunnel covering thirty tomato plants, a bunch of cucumbers and some experiments with melons, needed water. 

Two weeks of going to the river with two ten litre watering cans, carrying them across the road through our garden and up the top of the steps to where my polytunnel is sited, have left me two inches shorter in height and a 5th Dimension ear worm that wakes me up in the night.

Thank you 5th Dimension, weren't they great everyone?

News Just In:

Hosepipe ban to come into force in our area next week. 

Great, it’s only just turned July, and there are still a bunch of “flat earthers” who insist this can’t be the case after the rain last winter and they will fill their hot tubs regardless. 

When will we all become more "Water wise"?

Marvin Gaye and the Plug Pixies meet AI

To quote Marvin Gaye, 

What's going on (What's going on)


Yeah, what's going on (What's going on)


Tell me what's going on (What's going on)


I'll tell you, what's going on (What's going on) 

Right on, baby, right on. 

Half way through May and we get three frosts that hammered my allotment. On the third Saturday of the month we had ice on the windscreen of the car, on the fourth Saturday of the month the Celsius hit thirty degrees. To say my tomatoes are confused would be an understatement, and as for the potatoes and beans? 

Among all this nonsense, our lemon tree has flowered and plays host to a baby lemon who we have christened “Keith” 

As Marvin said “Lets get it on” 

Apologies “What’s going on” 

I could go on (Not a Marvin Gaye song) but can we all agree that if some flatearther insists the climate is not changing, and I’m looking at you principle in chief DJT, we take appropriate action flick them on the nose, clap them around the ears and call them out for the dinosaur focused on personal interest that they are. 

In the river, weed growth could be described as very verdant. Last year I didn’t cut much during the June weed cut, this June my scythe will be a blur. The thick growth holding water up and disguising the fact that the overall discharge has fallen rapidly over the past two months. Water clarity is remarkably good. For many years we suffered at this time of the year when the sun comes out, with a brown algae that lifts off the bottom of the river and breaks up through bubbly water adding a tint/tinge to the river. No such problem this year. How much this has to do with the citizen led water monitoring and data gathering that is now undertaken in this valley is open to debate. But maybe, just maybe, the Weasels at the Water treatment works half a mile upstream from here have felt under increasing pressure to abide by the rules that bizarrely they used to compile, monitor and implement, 

marking your own homework for several decades doesn’t even come close. 

During the two weeks when we switched from Arctic climate to that of Sardinia, Radio 4 aired an excellent series in the 15 minute slot between Sarah Montague at One and The Archers.  Titled “Rinsed” it is an excellent account of the machinations of Thames Water and their propensity to trash the River Windrush for a lengthy period. It is still available on the equally excellent BBC Sounds, a service that currently provides a soundtrack to my day. 

The Archers by the way, 

I was raised on activities in and around Ambridge and the movements of Walter Gabriel, Jack Wooley, Peggy Archer et al. Religiously listening to the omnibus edition on a Sunday morning, I withdrew my support in the late 1980s after a hard week helping out with the harvest on Leckford Estate (all departments helped out with the grain harvest). In that Sunday’s edition Tony Archer downed tools on his own harvest to spend the afternoon washing his Landrover. Maybe the agricultural story editor was away that week, but the penny dropped that this everyday tale of country folk had maybe taken a turn for the worse. 

I have since spoken to several people on the subject who also stopped listening to the show through the 1990s and 2000’s many citing the moment when David Archer stepped out of the shower and his abduction by aliens during the previous six months had all been a dream. Not sure where they got that idea from. 

Mayfly fishing is all that it should be, if a little later than previous years. There have been some very well attended dances and so far three heavy falls of spent mayfly. No sign of fish becoming sated yet, but it won’t be long. I also witnessed a major minnow ambitiously rise to a mayfly, which triggered an ear worm of “High Hopes” for the following hour. 

Our Chooks have been joined by a junior Muntjac. 

Chooks seem to be in charge and ooze confidence when emboldened by numbers, although the Muntjac seems perfectly happy in its role as honorary junior chicken. 

Tonight we receive  news from our friends at South Today that water companies in the South are concerned about water levels in several of their reservoirs. 

I did say. 

Unfortunately aquifer levels are not obvious to most eyes, nothing beats the sight of a long forgotten village peeping out of a depleted reservoir to get the message across. At which point I’d like to turn the focus on another member of the officer elite, General Perception. Often working in cahoots with General Consensus (It’s on here somewhere) The South and South East of England is slowly drying out. The way that we currently use a precious water source is unsustainable. Unsustainable for the precious and rare environment that is a chalkstream habitat, but unsustainable for the many millions of people living in the region. Reports of loss of supply and water bottle distribution stations are increasingly reported on the local news. A finger is quickly pointed at Weasely water companies and yes, they must be called into account but a leaky pipe in a region supplied by groundwater, is not water lost. It returns to the aquifer from which it was abstracted. 

The failure to invest in new reservoirs is also cited as a reason for the failure in supply, but the amount of water supply from any new reservoir would be a drop in the ocean to the amount of water “consumed” in the region. 

At which point I’ll point the finger at the tin pot leader that is Generalissimo Perception. It rained from November to March therefore to General Consensus's eyes there is plenty of water, case closed, fill up the hot tub, give the car a wash (and I’m looking at you here Tony Archer) and green grass for all. We can always point the finger at the Water Company to detract from the fact that Joe Public is compounding the problem by the way it uses a precious and diminishing water supply. 

It has been a mantra of this house for some years that we all need to become more water wise. Generalissimo Perception needs to pull his finger out and get this message across to General Consensus. 

We worked out crossing the road, for which we give thanks to Tufty.  The recycling thing and a plethora of bins have been nearly mastered, the energy crisis when Mad Vlad went rogue and this house gave up ironing, and all those adjustments we had to make in the poxy pandemic. 

If it’s beyond the wit of man to promote more efficient water use, then in an attempt to appear “current” I would suggest that this could be a job for AI, 

but AI use those increasing number of data centres, that rely heavily on water for cooling, 

Doh! 

Maybe just promote the idea to think a bit more about water use beyond the brief period that it sits in the sink after falling magically from the tap and disappearing down to the plug pixies who will perform further magic and make it all come back again. 

And AI?

I'll stick with my Furby, it doesn't use water.

General Consensus and his work with Lemmings

To quote the great Dolly Parton, 

Here we go again. 

I think you mean “Here you come again” – ed 

No matter, I’m confident Dolly would have uttered the missive at some point in her long life. 

Anyway, coming or going again, the point I was trying to make is that the amount of water currently flowing down this valley is the same as this time last year. 

The general consensus among the proletariat, is that we have had a more than wet winter, a record breaker for some, there is plenty of the old eau for all and we’ll hold no truck with talk of water running short this summer. 

At this point I’d like to propose the court martial of General Consensus for his/her numerous mistakes in several quarters over the past decade or so. 

Yes the mushy banks in January and of course all of those puddles, but as we have established, for whatever reason this little river drops at a remarkable rate (it’s on here somewhere) following a few weeks without rain. We have verdant weed growth which is maintaining a good level of water, last year we had poor weed growth (It’s on here somewhere - It isn’t, you were on a sabbatical from guff – ed) and in low water the river assumed a sickly hue early in the season.

 

Fingers are firmly crossed, and we are where we are, but now that General Consensus has been debagged please could we all agree to remember the experience of how last summer went with regard to water. The cream of local town society with the Croydon facelift will once again demand on local TV her right to wash her car and fill her hot tub once a week, but if we all agree to think about our water use earlier in the piece, the drought orders and hosepipe bans may be kicked down the road a tad. 

One last point on General Consensus. 

If you are ever in the company of anyone who begins a sentence with “The general consensus seems to be ….” 

Flick them on the nose, waggle them about the ears and question the number of people they have vox popped or polled to form this opinion. And next time they invoke the “General Consensus” line maybe consult a lemming and get their take on his work. 

Looking up, and there is much to look up about, despite the doom laden opening stanza, which principally served as an attempted coup on General Consensus. We have swifts, swallows, a lunacy of cuckoos and a murder of crows who flicked out a row of my second wave of broad beans. Hawthorn fly is over, although the Hawthorn bushes are in full bloom 

I have trawled the internet for a clip of somebody singing the “The Hawthorn is Over” a celebratory ditty marking the end of Steeleye Span and their career closing recording of the folk dirge The Hawthorn Song. 

By the way, Steeleye Span and their hats tipped with willow?

Dreadful business, I’d have taken a chainsaw to all of their headgear and faux attempts at folksy rural earnestness.

 

Oh yes, the river. Fishing hasn’t been easy but then we are still early in the season. The odd mayfly has put in an appearance and the odd fish has shown interest. Each day sees a blizzard of willow blossom that catches up on both cast and fly and a trickle of olives. A couple of times when opening the fishing hut early in the morning I have come across a few little black sedges from the night before ligging about the place. Small and brown, klinkhammers and parachute patterns are catching most fish although it may be worth persevering with the black patterns. A few duck are on eggs on the flight pond and one afternoon I came across a tangle of slowworms when moving some sheets of tin. It goes without saying that at this time of the year this place really sparkles. New leaves have a lustre that is lost by the end of the month, cuckoo flowers dot the long grass and comfrey/knitbone is beginning to flower providing a stimulus to all things that buzz about for a living. The chainsaw must come out again as several of the bankside willows now laden with leaves have dropped a foot or so and must be trimmed. 

I was kindly invited to fish an immaculately kept stretch of the Upper Test at Longparish this week. 

Wading water, it was quite a challenge, but I did catch two small brown trout during my brief visit. Brief because I’d had a chaotic morning prior to my late arrival, and then discovered that I’d left all my casts and nylon at home. 

Many of the fish demonstrated similar behaviour to our own on the Dever, hugging the bottom reluctant to look up until a decent hatch of fly begins and the water warms up a bit. 

An enjoyable trip, thanks very much to my hosts for the invite.

Stout Cortez and a Beard of Bees

HO! (After Plum) 

Back on the river and the trout fishing season is now begun. 

Nothing to do with me, but the river is in good shape. Pristine gravels, plenty of fish, a few good hatches of hawthorn and verdant weed growth in places that I shall attend to next week. The hat is on three hairs, plus the lark’s on the wing the snail upon the thorn and for those of a religious bent, whichever god you worship, is in his heaven and if only in this corner of Hampshire, all is right with the world. 

Which seems decidedly upbeat considering the current state of world affairs, and also the god that I have worshipped for much of my time still mooching about this planet – Kenny Dalglish, is still very much with us and despite his great age may be worth considering for a place on the bench at the very least, given recent performances emanating from Anfield. 

Ed - maybe drop the Robert Browning analogy, stick to Plum but don’t drop Kenny. 

First week of the season has gone well, with most who have attended catching fish. Not much going on in the evening with all fish caught late morning to early mid afternoon to hawthorn and olive patterns. Some fish still sulk and skulk which may be due to water temperature, as it is still only mid April. Over on the Itchen I blundered about with my mower one afternoon accompanied by a multitude of grannom, busily fluttering about in their upstream manner. 

No swafts or swillows yet, just a few house martins buzzing about the allotment up the road. Cuckoo flowers are out and Knitbone won’t be far behind it. 

Madam reports a plethora of coves with high end glass on Bransbury Common, as she undertakes her afternoon reintroduction to normal society after a day at the educational coal face that is the local primary school. 

Not sure Moss and Dougal always provide succour to her briefly troubled soul as they stretch out and flush whatever avian oddities the lens clad crowd have gathered to take in. Although they haven’t made any of the “Birding” sites yet, unlike the regular reports a few years ago of “Great Grey Shrike disturbed by lady with Labradors”

In apiculture news, I was disturbed from further blunderings with a mower by a swarm of bees entering stage left.

 

It’s not that unusual in these parts during the summer months. Last year Madam and myself were deep into post prandial pegs in the garden one Sunday afternoon when we heard a swarm approaching. A beard of bees, they hung about on the beech tree before moving on a few hours later. 

Today’s lot occupied a spikey bush in the Mill house garden for a few hours. Local bee keepers with a spare hive were summoned and the process of moving the swarm progressed.

 

The branch on which they were clinging was cut and the ten thousand or so bees dropped into a wicker waste paper bin. The cut branch was then shaken to remove bees from the cut branch and the bin inverted on a board placed in the middle of a bed sheet. 

The mass of bees trying to get into the waste paper bin confirmed that the Queen bee was inside, and so a small hole was made at the the base of the basket to allow all bees outside the basket bumbling about the garden to return to their queen by night fall. 

All bees tucked up in bed with their queen the basket is then scooped up in the bed sheet and transported in the boot of the car to their new lodgings. While attending to a dead ash in late summer last year, I’d come come across a bunch of bees kicking back in the hollowed out trunk. Once they run out of space due to an energetic breeding programme, they swarm and seek out new digs, my guess is that this was that bunch of bees looking to “upsize” from their dead tree trunk. 

Which serves as a reminder not to be too tidy when it comes to managing woodland. Dead wood is a viable habitat for all manner of flora and fauna. If you don’t need it for logs, leave it lying around, it has a part to play in increasing biodiversity. 

In Sonde news, it’s on here somewhere and includes a link with space, which seems to be an increasing preoccupation with this house, and who knows there may be chalk streams in space that we don’t know about and hey AI! and apologies kids, we’ve been through this before with Deep Thought and the answer to everything being 42, so move on everyone. 

With a nod to further AI, has anyone picked up on the fact that Max Headroom (apologies again kids, look him up, he was very much the “Me Matt Baker “ of his day) and Kier Starmer are never seen in the same room? 

Oh yes the Sonde. Measuring a range of water quality parameters every ten minutes or so before sending results out into space 

Enough Intergalactical stuff! – Ed 

It is zapping out some eye opening data.  As previously stated, this river currently carries a particular sparkle. It is everything a chalk stream should be at this time of year. Past years have seen algal blooms and, on one occasion, the insidious blanket weed bursting forth in April. Maybe all the citizen action and plethora of data gathered to challenge the weasels at water companies and under funded environment agency is having an affect, - power to the people! 

In allotment news, the threat of frost remains a worry, although with circs in the Straits of Hormuz, which I have yet to fish, I am aware of the requirement to produce food. 

With a nod to renewables I have a dozen disco windmills to keep the pigeons off my peas and a solar powered door on the chicken house, which will please Ed Millibum. But we’ve an oil powered boiler and are lucky that we have a ready supply of logs that can feed the mother of wood burners that, at a push, heats the house and puts hot food on the table. 

I’ve not spoken to his Edness, but brief calculations, while in wine, confirm that I am somewhere near carbon neutral – provided I don’t eat too many pulses and the resultant gas, but weren’t pulses and seeds going to make me live forever? It’s all a bit of a worry, but science teaches us that dark chocolate and red wine will always carry the day, so I’ll stick to that. 

Apologies but I’ll break a previous promise in the piece and sign off with a paraphrase from Plum, or possibly Keats, and with regard to current affairs, invoke the spirit of Stout Cortez who once gazed with eagle eyes upon the cliffs of Darien with wild surmise. 

And hope that the grown ups/sensible people turn up at some point.

Not just to this house, but the world in general. 

Footnote: Fishing Helps.