Glorious Mud

Glorious Mud

As published in K&S Courier 1^st February 2013

Under the headline “Walkers beware: It’s a mire out there”

Will it NEVER dry out!

The countryside round here is like the Great Grimpen Mire after all the recent rain and snow.

A couple of weeks ago you could have water-skied down our hill.

The stream at the end of the garden burst its banks and flooded the field opposite turning it into a vast water meadow.

Only the hardiest dog owners venture out – and they seem to choose their routes more carefully than I did the other day.  “It’s a lovely walk,” I told Mrs B as we tacked the car up the road, “but it may be a bit muddy.”

Fifteen minutes later Myrtle (that’s the dog not Mrs B) was covered from nose to tail in glutinous goo,  while we two were sunk up to our Wellie rims.  Now it’s not easy to extricate your foot from deep mud AND simultaneously retain your boot and your balance. And it’s not easy to keep a straight face when your other half ends up face down and completely coated.

“But it’s my best coat” she wailed, before a malicious smile erupted as she watched me topple forward with a resounding squelch.  

The farmer whose land we were crossing also had difficulty hiding his mirth as he saw us returning a short while later. “Bit on the damp side,” he said laconically, before ushering his cows onto the public footpath to churn up the last little patch of solid ground.

But please don’t think I’m complaining.  We in the High Weald are blessed with wonderful footpaths and stunning scenery along with some curmudgeonly characters like that farmer.

I hope you’ll meet them over the next weeks and months.  But first perhaps it would be polite to make some introductions.  You’ve already encountered Myrtle, an excessively lively two year-old Springer-Collie.  And you’ve had a fleeting acquaintance with Mrs B whose refrain is usually, “She’s YOUR dog, YOU take her out in this storm/hurricane/blizzard/tornado. I’ll wait until the sun is shining and the birds singing.”

And there’s me.  I really am called Kent.  And I really am from Kent.  Which can be a tad confusing.  But my parents erred sometimes on the pretentious side and rather liked county monikers… like Somerset Maugham.  Somerset Barker somehow just wasn’t right.  And since my grandfather had, in 1930, bought a dilapidated cottage on the outskirts of Benenden, the association with this county seemed sufficient to name me after it.  And that’s where our story starts...