THIS has been, so far, a spring that most of will remember for a long time. The sun shone and the battles have raged - in Beggarsdale, as well as Iraq.

Then a very dark cloud drifted over the horizon and there is genuine fear in the Dale. We are all happily united again (or at least, as united as we shall ever be). Strange.

I shall explain: the war in Iraq caused one of the most furious splits in the village for years. But when that was dying down, another topic erupted to keep the fires of dissension raging.

And this was so British that only a foreign comedy writer could do it justice, for no Brit would actually see the funny side.

For whilst our lads and their American comrades in arms were fighting their way into Baghdad and Basra, a fierce battle broke out between the Scots and the English - over hedgehogs.

The Radio Four Today programme, the undisputed flagship of BBC broadcasting (and that includes TV) interrupted its coverage of the siege of Saddam Hussein's bunker to say that Scottish bird-lovers had begun their campaign to exterminate the hedgehogs on the remote island of Uist.

Prickles, you see, eats the eggs of ground-nesting birds and, as always happens in the conservation world, birds take precedence over every other form of wildlife like mammals, fish and even butterflies.

This animal ethnic cleansing infuriated English hedgehog lovers, who sent in the marines to smuggle box-loads of prickly bundles off the island to the mainland. There, scoffed the Scottish avian storm-troopers, they would die of starvation or disease.

All this whilst our soldiers were dying in Basra, much to the delight of the French, who had opposed the war so that they could go on selling atomic power stations to fuel Saddam's nuclear weapons.

But the slaughter of hedgehogs in a Celtic part of the United Kingdom got Anglo-Saxon hearts racing.

However, just when we were about to march on Culloden once more, Jetset came back home after one of his regular tours of the Far East in search of the cheap textiles.

And he had a cold - which sent shivers down many a Beggarsdale spine. He had passed through both Hong Kong and Singapore, you see, where this new type of incurable pneumonia called Sars is rife.

He had not stopped in The Lane when he drove back to his converted barn, which was unusual because after one of these long trips his first port of call is usually the Beggars' Arms.

This was actually the topic of discussion in the bar on Tuesday evening when the phone rang. The Inn Keeper had a short, rather sombre sounding conversation, and put the phone down.

"That was Jetset," he said. "He's got a bit of a chill and he thinks it is better if he doesn't come out for a few days in view of the circumstances."

This put us all into a deep gloom. The ancient annals of Beggarsdale indicate that the village suffered badly during the Black Death in the 13th Century. But that couldn't possible happen in the 21st. Could it?

Suddenly, all our squabbles are forgotten. People queue up to leave homemade soups and pies on Jetset's front porch.

It is impossible to talk to him because his phone is engaged all day with calls from well wishers. The Doc is besieged every time he sets foot in the village - but he won't tell us anything, anyway, 'cos of professional ethics.

The real world has come to the Dale. Now, we can only sit and wait.

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