The Path To True Misery

Paths have always held a fascination for me. Who has walked this way? When? Why? And where are they now? All these questions that seem to arise at any gateway or meeting of paths such as in today's image which was taken down the road in the woods beneath Abbey Bridge on the river Tees.

It is good to have had the first frost of the year, proper frost that is, however I am becoming rather dismayed at the BBC weather reports, and for goodness sake it was only a degree or two of frost! Hardly the stuff of 'severe weather warnings' which the Met office seems all too desperate to issue, why must they do this? Every time we have a degree of frost, a bit of ice, or a flake or two of snow, there they are pissing themselves to get on air and warn us of impending calamity if we don't stay tucked up indoors nice and safe. Total over-dramatisation of a simple weather forecast, perhaps the population of these fair isles have become so removed from seasonal change and working with and within the elements that slightly deviant from the norm weather is a source of excitement, expectation, and thrill, we are after all very much a thrill seeking nation these days, the more instant the better. It is interesting to note that Arctic ice has thinned by record amounts this last year and many scientists are starting to feel a 'tipping' point' has been passed and were all probably going to die.....There! I've over-dramatised the journal so perhaps the BBC might give me a job 'Gardeners Doomtime' perhaps, after all there are few butterflies, the bees have all but disappeared, fungal infections (of gardens!) are spreading, summers are fading, seasons getting wetter, plant growth is becoming tighter and more constricted, alien pests are invading and destroying our trees, herbicides in manure are poisoning our allotments and plants, while miserable bastards like myself and the weather forecasters are doing nothing to cheer us up. Off with their knackers I say!

Incidentally, has anyone else noticed the amount of pregnant weather forecasters? Over the past few years they must have produced about a hundred babies between them...I've also noticed this phenomena spreading into the newsreaders. Perhaps the studio at News 24 is haunted by a highly imaginative ghost who slips one in when nobody's looking....a report that is.