Mud, mud…etc

 

I don’t care how good it is for cooling the blood. Who wants their blood cooled in an English winter anyway?

 

There’s nothing particularly glorious about mud – and we should know. We’ve all had plenty of opportunity to make that assessment over the past few weeks.

 

The winter of 2020-21 has to go down as one of the muddiest on record. There won’t actually be any records, of course – how does one quantify degrees of muddiness? By depth? Or viscosity? 

 

So while my claim is entirely anecdotal, I’m sure that every walker out there will agree with me. 

 

It’s been a wet old winter, and everyone has been out because there’s literally nothing else to do but go for a walk. So our combined footfalls in the soft, wet earth have churned up the ground to such an extent that the paths and river banks are now quagmires. So we’re forced to squelch along in our wellies, making disgusting sucking noises with our feet while clinging to wire fences to prevent ourselves from going base over apex.

 

The mud has become a real problem. Speaking to my friend Sue the other day she told me about a friend of hers who became completely stuck in the mud when out walking her dog. Apparently this friend had to phone her grown-up daughter for assistance. But when the aforesaid daughter couldn’t help, the police had to be called.

 

There’s so much wrong with this story I hardly know where to start. 

 

How did the woman’s daughter find her in the middle of the mud? Why didn’t she also get stuck? And why did the police – of all people – ultimately need to be called?

 

That’s the trouble with third-party anecdotes. The other person never asks the right questions so you’re left in limbo, with only half a story to pass on to others.

 

However, assuming that this woman did indeed need to call for back-up after becoming stuck in the mud, it’s a salutary lesson to us all. On that note I’m going to forgo my daily squelch and replace it with the telly and some cake.