Walking with Ollie today, I was reminded of the old Paul Simon Song. Not that it has anything to do with dog-walking of course.

No, it was because the mud is back with a vengeance, and I was definitely slip-slidin’ away, even in my stout wellington boots. Although we have had no snow yet, and only one ‘car window-scraping’ hard frost, we have had a lot of rain. Over the past week, it has often rained for 12-16 hours a day, and I can’t actually remember the last day when there was no rain at all.

They (the weather reporters) say it’s the warmer weather, caused by a nice video graphic swirling around in the Atlantic Ocean that is sucking up warm air from North Africa, and turning it into rain. (Something like that, but the graphic looked good on the weather report) It seems to be in a cyclical pattern, and definitely visiting the east of England on its cycle. Beetley is in the east of England, only 26 miles from the point that says ‘Next Stop, Holland’.

(Across the North Sea, so you will need a boat of some kind)

So as usual, we have had a lot of rain. Rain eventually makes earth become mud. Rain swells the local river so that it overflows onto the paths, creating more mud. Then the mud stops supporting the roots of the trees on the riverbank, and they fall into, or across, the small river. The trees in the water cause the river to overflow even more, adding slick new mud on top of the old thick mud.

Now that’s what I call ‘Cyclical’.

Altogether now, try to keep up with Paul…