"GLOBAL warmin'? Global bleepin' wettin', that's wor'l call it," said Ben the Bucket, the demon gardener of Beggarsdale. And he brought the back of his spade down with a splat onto the muddy earth.

"See that?" he said, lifting the spade and turning it face down. "Dozens of the bleepers. They've been breedin' like rabbits all winter."

And sure enough, the back of the spade was slimed with a grey goo which had once been a colony of slugs. More crushed remains pocked the flattened mud below.

"What's more, there are snails everywhere, wire worms in me compost, and black fly on me broad beans. Where's it all goin' t'end, that's worr'I wanna know?"

Now this here is a question beyond me and, indeed, beyond the best scientific brains on this planet of ours.

Ten years ago, before they discovered a hole in the ozone layer, the boffins were forecasting a new ice age. Then we had a series of summers that almost turned the Dales to desert. Since then, it has rained. And rained. And rained.

Now Ben, who gets his nickname from chasing horses up the bridle path, bucket in hand, is what you might call an organic gardener. Not because he is a trendy but out of simple necessity: since he was made redundant when the quarry closed, he can't afford those "fancy chemical concoctions".

Neither can I, for that matter, for since gardening became a national obsession, the prices of even the most elementary items seem to have soared.

So Ben uses the old tried and trusted methods: a bit of lime here, some soot there (mainly garnered from the huge chimneys at the Beggars' Arms), soap-and-water sprays for the aphids. Yet he still manages to carry away a bundle of first prices at the annual Beggarsdale show.

He has however, like all of us, lost one of his key allies in the never-ending battle against horticultural bad buys: Jack Frost seems to have taken early retirement (has he got an index linked pension, one asks?).

For Old Jack was an cold-hearted killer: slugs, snails, aphids and various nasty fungi fell like corn before his icy scythe. I remember many a Christmas having to take a pick-axe to dig up a few parsnips to go with the turkey, for the frost had sunk four or five inches into the ground.

This winter I can count the number of hard frosts on a single hand. Two hands would probably account for the last three years.

And, here's the rub, some of those came late in April or even May, just in time to mow down your tender young plants but too late to do much harm to the slugs: by that time, they has gone into such explosive reproduction that even a mass slaughter left a few billion to munch their way through the early cabbage and lettuce.

However, Ben and I have a plan. It involves a lot of chicken wire, stout sacks, and a good supply of torch batteries. Anyone planning a nocturnal visit to Beggarsdale in the next few weeks, Beware. It's round-up time down in the Dale.

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

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