Drought of order! My parched veg will be patchy

CALL that rain? Twenty-six dry days and then the clouds lowered their skirts for a brief sprinkling on our parched earth.

The promised April showers got as far as Bingley and then gave up as they approached my allotment.

If it doesn’t rain soon, and I mean chuck it down, it will be another lean year.

Some species don’t seem to care. The broad beans are coming on a treat, vigorous dark green shoots bursting through the soil – unlike the cabbage plants, wilting under the hot sun, and the no-show potatoes.

But with dwindling supplies in the two butts, I can’t afford to water tatties.

It’s been so dry our moorlands are ablaze, courtesy of the ignorant and the criminal. Marsden Moor in the Pennines burned for three days and fires broke out in Dorset, Cornwall, the Lake District and North Wales. The vegetation is tinder-dry. It only takes one careless cigarette or an abandoned barbie to create an inferno.

And the relaxation of lockdown has seen hordes heading for the hills.

You can’t blame them, after being indoors for so long. But have they read the “refreshed” Countryside Code published this month to mark its 70th anniversary? It says little about the dangers of fire, only two paragraphs, and one of them is about landowners setting deliberate controlled blazes “to manage vegetation”.

Basically, it warns “be careful”, because fires are devastating to wildlife and habitat. Self-evident, but not to the barbie-blockheads.

My planned May Day BBQ on the allotment will obviously be the signal for the heavens to open up. With luck!