The Curmudgeon

Ben the Bucket, the dale's demon gardener, is almost suicidal. Mrs Maggots has been spotted buying monster leeks at Marton's poshest veggie shop.

And thanks to my squirrel, I'm pretty depressed too.

It looks as though global warming has put paid to this year's flower and veg show and that is just about as big a disaster as one could get by the banks of the Beggar.

Not that this has been a bad growing year, you understand. It has been a marvellous year, in fact, thanks to the hot weather and the odd heavy downpour. Those of us with easy access to water from the beck during the heatwaves have seen our crops bloom.

Trouble is, they have been blooming too blooming much.

At this time of the year, many of our would-be prizewinners should be in peak form. But the sad fact is that they have come - and gone.

My superb cabbages began to split in May, outgrowing their outer leaves like The Hulk bursting through his shirts. The only thing we could do was eat 'em or freeze 'em.

The same with my courgettes. I watered them one Friday afternoon before we went away to stay for the weekend with Westmorland Will up Kendal way and when we came back, they were marrows.

As for the marrows, they did The Hulk thing too and, by early August, they had been stuffed, pickled or given away. Such a glut I have never seen - but now they're compost.

Which means that they will not be one of my entries at the show in one of the categories which has given me some modest success in the past.

And unless the one we have hanging up in the cellar in one of Mrs C's old stockings keeps - they can succumb to fungus disease very quickly - there will be no centrepiece for the Harvest Festival this year.

However, the worst disaster of all has been my red and blackcurrants and the jam Mrs C makes with them. That crop was absolutely brilliant because I had paid it a lot of attention after a visit to the Mar'ton supermarket last year and seeing inferior examples on sale at £11 a kilo.

I am not much of a mathematician, but that works out at nearly £5 a pound so no wonder Mrs C's jam regularly lifts a prize at the show. Not this year, however.

Just when they were beginning to ripen, they began to disappear. Thinking it would be birds, I covered them down to the ground with netting - I like my garden birds but I can't afford to let them live like millionaires.

But as soon as they had turned colour, they still disappeared. I was baffled. Then, one sunny day, I was having my snap well back in the shed to catch some shade and the currant bushes began to move.

They twitched, swayed and finally did a lively little jig - but there was no bird in sight. Baffled, I sat with sandwich poised halfway to mouth. I should have had more sense because my precious fruit was being gorged by the second.

Finally, I got to my feet and approached. The bushes stopped twitching and the culprit appeared. On the ground.

It cocked its head, waved its tail in disdain, and made for the elders at the end of the garden. It didn't even bother to run. And up on a branch, it sat, eyeing me cheekily, and continued to masticate the fruits of my labours.

It was a grey squirrel that had attacked my bushes from the ground up, thus outflanking the netting.

If this were a sci-fi magazine, I would call this article The Attack of the Gourmet squirrels. For that's what I have and redcurrants are what I haven't. At a fiver a pound! That's a lot to pay for not going to the show!

* The Curmudgeon is a satirical column based on a fictitious character in a mythical village.