Mud.
It's everywhere.
Some wisecrack once sung a song "mud mud glorious mud...".
Honestly. There really is nothing glorious about mud.
I mean, yeah. It's fun sometimes to splash around in a muddy puddle a-la-Peppa-Pig and have a jolly frolic. Bear in mind that Peppa Pig is a pig. Actually Peppa Pig is a cartoon so doesn't have any nerve endings or senses so doesn't actually know that she is in a puddle. It is the animators who tell her she is in a muddy puddle. And then make her react appropriately... or... do they?
It maybe easier avoid this kind of philosphical positing (does a cartoon pig have feelings? If you're not looking, does Peppa Pig still exist? Will Peppa Pig and her obese Dad with the fat voice be made into Walls Bangers?...Think how many people would be fed as a result. Could solve many problems, as long as 50% doesn't get thrown away by dodgy best-before-dates... that would be wasteful) as it tends to do your head no good. Well, not mine anyway.

But there is a lot of mud around here at the moment.

We moved to the green fields and rolling hills of Hampshire in April 2012. I can count on 2 hands the number of sunny days we have had since then. So it's not too surprising that there is a lot of mud around. What with tractors racing through the village; cows tip-toeing on the hill; walkers tramping the National Park paths in their special walking clothes (oh god, don't get me started on walkers clothes, and their little walking sticks that are retractable...); crazy scramblers ripping up the tracks; dogs rolling in the brown icky mess; wellingtons up to the brim in the stuff; rivers are voluptuous and, yes, brown - there are no clean puddles to wash the wellies, it oozes it's way under your front door into your house, and before you know it your stair carpets are covered, like the antithesis of nutella:- mud: it's the housewifes' worst nightmare.
Not even Flash Superior can solve this mud problem.

I walked up a hill the other day. And at the top it was flooded. How does that happen? Why had the water not run down the hill like other normal water? What was special about this water? I surveyed the scene with an inquisitive, scientific eye, an eyebrow raised, a welly stuck in a deep squelching brown mess. I thought I was about to have an Albert Einsten moment and was close to taking the Nobel Peace Price for Brilliance.
And then I realised - like my welly, even the water was stuck in the mud! Wow! Epiphany! I'll take the money thanks! Don't worry about a trophy!

Mud isn't very glorious.
It's very big and it's not clever. It's a bit like the irritating fat-boy at school that no one really likes, unless he is waving a chocolate bar around at playtime.
Even playing games like pretending it's the biggest doggy doo in the world plopped on our county, or the worlds largest country-pancake, or Willy Wonka's factory having a technical problems, or imagining if it somehow flooded Waitrose... - it doesn't really help.
In fact it is depressing because all these giant flooding poo references are so close to the truth.

You want the truth? You can't handle the truth!

The wellington boot industry must LOVE this weather.
I wish I'd had the foresight to buy shares in Dunlop and those little kiosks in Undergrounds that sell umbrella's on rainy days and suncream on sunny days. Man, I'd be rolling in it (not the poo, more likely in the sea, in Barbados...).
 
Meanwhile, as the wellington boot manufacturers laugh out loud (LOL!) - recession? What recession?! and sales in rubber protection (foot, stop being dirty...) rocket, us country folk slop around, looking at the sky, looking at the floor, looking at each others mud-splattered rubber protection and weep another tear (into a bucket, to avoid further ground saturation) as the brown waters rise and the mud waves trickle closer to our homes.

Anyone know any good sun-dances?