Our farmer-bashing Government should take serious note of farmers helping tackle the Langdale Moor fire - Sarah Todd
Tired of terrier-like rants about the state of the nation this correspondent has made a deliberate effort to drop down a gear for this week’s missive.
Living in the sticks it’s easy to forget that it’s the school holidays, but a trip to town - and the horrors of mothers elbowing their way to the checkout with uniform supplies - brought back memories of our own summers.
Haymaking, harvest and cantering up stubble fields on four-legged friends, trips to the seaside and then in the last week maybe some brambling.
Some brambling? Going with an old ice cream tub and picking what we always called brambles (but now seem to be known by their Sunday name of blackberries) up the hedge backs.
As an aside, back then the stubble fields, left by the combine, stayed straw-like in colour long after we were back at school; now they are ploughed-up - sorry, cultivated - in what seems like the blink of an eye.
Anyway, back to brambles. They were very much an autumn thing; think crumble and pie time.
There has been some ripening here since Great Yorkshire Show time; that’s early July.
Does it matter? No, but in a brain that sometimes feels fit for bursting with anger at asylum seekers in hotels and Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s raids of hard-working people’s purses, reflecting on findings from the Woodland Trust (which gathers recordings from the public) - such as the “average first ripe blackberry date” this year was July 6” - is somehow soothing.
While this forward fruiting could very well be a symbol of climate change, with this year notching up the warmest and sunniest spring on record, it has on the flipside been amazing to see so many ladybirds. This is where, as the late Queen so poignantly put it when Prince Harry and his wife spilled their beans in that Oprah Winfrey interview, “recollections may vary”.
When we were young, or is it the old rose-coloured spectacles again, there seemed to always be lots of ladybirds to count the dots on but recently some summers seem to have come and gone without seeing a single one.
A swarm of them distracted players at Lord’s in London earlier in the summer to such an extent that there was a brief pause in the cricket. Apparently, this is because of the climate conditions. Conditions that could leave birds, which would use berries to sustain them through the autumn and winter, going hungry. Same with bees; already showing signs of shutting down for the winter because of flowering plants finishing producing pollen and nectar earlier than usual in the hot weather.
Thinking of those ripe brambles and some apples ready a good month earlier than normal, does the strangely yellow-leafed autumnal feel (in spite of the heat) matter?
Something that brings the climate into sharper focus than yours truly’s ramblings about brambles ever could, has been the fire that recently broke out near RAF Fylingdales on Langdale Moor, up on the North York Moors.
A major incident was declared and, at its peak, 19 fire engines were at the scene. It was impossible not to think of traditional wildfire territories like in Australia as the television pictures showed helicopters dropping water on the blazing land below. Now, trying to remain cool as a pre-climate change cucumber, it is impossible not to wonder whether this fire needs to be seen as a warning sign.
Some of the old fire appliances looked more like something children’s television’s Fireman Sam would be ambling to the rescue in. Yes, despite their valiant efforts the firefighting teams looked woefully under-equipped with farmers and gamekeepers doing so much more than picking up the slack.
Our farmer-bashing Government should take serious note of the tractors towing water bowsers into the thick of this emergency. Without them, it’s impossible not to wonder whether this fire would ever have been brought under some sort of control. Looking at footage filmed from tractor cabs; this rural army really were risking their lives driving such flammable vehicles into the heart of the flames.
Why should they really, when all Sir Keir Starmer and his cronies are interested in is grabbing their land and robbing them of their livelihood through inheritance taxes and other policies.
So much for the opening aim of not getting hot under the collar this week. Maybe there is no getting away from life being like a bramble bush, moments of sweetness - the ripe fruit - but always thorns to look out for.