So this is what Climate Change feels like

It's a bit rubbish really.

We've been having a storm here in the England's West Country - home of scrumpy cider, clotted cream and people who say arrr without having to dress as pirates first - for the last fifteen days. It's not much of a storm as things go really, but the sheer duration of it is wearing people down. The Hollow garden is partially drowned and partially blown to bits and generally looks rather sorry for itself. The Feathery Ladies are on strike despite having a sheltered area, and a few times this week they've refused to leave the nest boxes until after noon. It's so gloomy they're not convinced it's morning, you see.

The really depressing part is that this is exactly what the Climate Change models for our part of the world say; not supercell cooling and a new ice age but milder temperatures and more wind and rain as the heat transfer from the tropics jacks up a notch or two. And where's Dennis Quaid when you need him? Nowhere, that's where. Dragging a sledge across frozen North America to rescue some children = cool: dragging your soggy arse down the garden to rescue the brussel sprouts = just plain miserable. You couldn't pay him enough.

This isn't just a moan (I'm actually hoping that Sod's Law will dictate that as soon as I post this the wind will drop and the sun will come out) but I'm not immune to the lack of motivation. The polytunnel's all up to date but the rest of it is quietly going to swampy hell. I should be out there pruning and manuring and clearing up for winter, instead of which I'm cuddled up indoors with a warm word processor. But I've finally run out of excuses and it's time to face the simple truth...

I don't want to go out there. And you can't make me.

Crows. Gotta love 'em.

Okay, so. The fiction piece I'm putting together has crows in it. I've spoken about the crow family before, you might remember, and since then I've been doing a bit of research and things just keep getting weirder. It's all good stuff. For instance, a friend's grandfather used to split the tongue of magpies - I don't condone this but apparently it enabled them to make some additional sounds - after which they could be taught to speak like a mynah. Crows make tools when they need them, indulge in group play when food is plentiful, and recognise their own reflection in a mirror rather than thinking it's another bird.

In the Norse pantheon the chief god, Odin, has two ravens who gather information by day and whisper it to him at night. So please, my pets - fly high, and come back to tell me any scraps of lore about the crow family that you have heard on your travels.

Patron Saint of Mediocrity

Huzzah, I've managed to depress myself. Over the course of a weekend away I have read - no, devoured - The Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger*. Unfortunately (for me) it blows a fiction concept I was considering out of the water because it is so similar to my storyline. There was no time travel in my version, but the emotional landscape was exactly the same. The depressing bit isn't the similarity, though; it's simply that she's done it so much better than I could have done it. I feel a bit like Antonio Salieri in Peter Shaffer's Amadeus, and it's not a feeling I care to dwell on.

I'm aching to write fiction. Thankfully that particular project was already on the back burner due to a rather more peculiar process that's been fighting for conscious space in the Pandora's Box that is my brain; elements of a story have been assembling themselves for several weeks, like reversed footage of someone dropping a teapot. It has mythical elements in it, and crows, and an elderly lady who pretends to read fortunes in Campden market. My job seems to be to try to keep the heart of it a human story while it assembles itself, instead of letting all the other elements become what it's actually about.

Regardless, today; today I write about cucumbers. For behold! I am the Harbinger of Salad.



*A real piece of work, even down to the wily choice of title. See what the author (or more likely her editor) did there? In four words, it says 'This is a book about time travel' (to males) and 'This is not really a book about time travel, it's a book for women pretending to be a book about time travel but really it's about one woman's love - probably doomed love, while I think about it - for a truly impossible man. Buy this, and two full boxes of tissues' (to women).