MIKE EDWARDS

THE WEATHER continues.

I have never considered whether Llangwm’s denizens had an evolutionary advantage. I now realise their webbed feet are adapted to the volume of rainfall we’ve experienced over the last few months.

This week, the skipper of my cricket club called me preseason. It was hard to hear him through his scuba gear, but I got the gist that he was doing some work on the ground. This year, the theme is mud.

I’ve had some nasty injuries playing cricket. Cricket balls are hard, and my reactions are measured in geological time instead of seconds. However, contracting trench foot while standing in the slips will be a new experience.

I don’t watch soccer, for it is a silly game. I can only imagine what the outfields of shared grounds will look like. It’s quite bad enough if you have to chase the ball across the outfield at the best of times. I dread to think what it will be like with the ever- present risk of being sucked under by cloying mud, never to be seen again.

If you play in Saundersfoot, you’ll have to be careful not to be dragged away by a sea monster - or Big Nerys - at the bottom end of the pitch.

Never mind the cricket, however; it’s my garden I’m increasingly worried about.

I ’ m contemplating u s ing waterlilies on the patio. They ’ l l probably be the only things, apart from weeds , that’ll grow i n this weather.

What with those idiot muesli munchers who want to rewild everywhere, I’ll end up with a damned beaver dam next to the azaleas and an infestation of herons in the fuchsias.

Take daffodils: tough as old boots, they are.

This year’s display was not only weeks late, but its blooms were hammered back down into the soil as soon as they opened. Spring has not so much sprung as it has gurgled noisily and given up.

I’m using a hover mower on my beloved front lawn for the first time. At the end of February, the old Honda petrol mower sank without a trace near the polyanthus bed. I’ll need a metal detector to find it.

Mitzi is so wateraverse that she’s taken to hiding from my beloved at the first sign of walkies.

The other day, it got so bad that her nose wouldn’t extend beyond the backdoor. While the missus was on the phone exchanging unpleasantries with Enfys Pritchard, I gently applied the toe of my boot to Mitzi’s pine end to encourage her to go outside.

The Hellhound got her revenge. I’d carelessly left the shed door open.

You wouldn’t believe something that size could come from such a small dog. I needed a shovel and breathing apparatus to remove it, though. And it was raining while I did so.

Much more of this, and I’ll start looking out for signs of ark building on the Preselis.

Until then: glug, glug,

glug.