Very strange weather in recent days. One expects rain in the spring but torrential downpours, flooded roads and high winds for a solid week are a bit excessive, even for the fens. There was even a piece in the national press about it at the weekend predicting all sorts of doom. Here in Mirkmere we actually find ourselves temporarily cut off from the outer world, or more precisely the world is cut off from us. Thank goodness for the Internet. Doubtless the waters will shortly recede but it has been an interesting few days, if rather damp ones
Meanwhile, the Old Lame Duck pub has had a new coat of paint, and has hired a new and adventurous chef for its kitchens with hopes of attracting a more prosperous cutomer base. The old ways no longer pay the bills. The daily 7am workers’ and commuters bus to Huntingdon has been rescheduled and henceforth runs at 9:30 am on alternate odd numbered weekdays in months with an ‘R’ in the name and on the even days the other months of the year – and the fare has tripled due to the removal of the public transport subsidy by the government (god bless ‘em).
Where were the Mirkmere Morris??? If Fenstanton could have been out at dawn today, where our lot?
Our morris dancers once again failed to get up at dawn to see in May Day despite their promises and the posters around the town – the three small children, old dog and two milkmen who had come to watch them in the rain were disappointed but not surprised. They promise to be better organised next year … where have we heard that before? Perhaps they might take a leaf out of the book of their Fenstanton friends who, we are reliably told, did drag themselves put to ensure the sun rose.
Since the announcement here on Friday of the forming of an action committee to protest the erection of wind turbines near our town there has been much interest and support. Of course, our main objection was primarily on aesthetic grounds but we could not help but be intrigued, not to say a little alarmed, by the release of data collected in Texas that seems to indicate that these machines can actually affect the climate and are not quite the ultimate green energy solution we have been told. It works like this: … at night the air closer to the ground naturally becomes colder when the sun goes down and the earth cools. However, on huge wind farms the motion of the turbines mixes the warmer air higher in the atmosphere with cooler air on the ground and thereby raises the overall temperature in their vicinity by a small, but important,amount. The Texan data has found that over a decade the local temperature near wind farms went up by almost 1degC as more turbines are built. Sounds small, but it isn’t.
This is worrying indeed as it is expected to have long term effects on wildlife living in the immediate areas of wind farms and, what is more, it could also affect regional weather patterns as warmer areas affect the formation of cloud and even wind speeds.
We shall watch this.
Mirkmere is (discretely) run by a Quality Parish Council
