Running out of time.

You know time.

It slips away and never returns.

Already the days are getting shorter the nights longer and this famous blue planet is slowly baking under a scorching sun.

Yet we persist in our endeavour to save what we can. Our precious little marsh is holding water.

And that is solely down to us. That’s because we’ve built dams. They have stopped the water draining away. Ironically if the Earthling authorities found our dams they’d remove them. Or make us remove them. Thats because we haven’t got their permission.

I’ve never tried to remove a dam before. I think it would be difficult to do while sticking a couple of fingers up.

This is what happens to the parts of the marsh that we have yet to keep wet.

The soil has shrunk. It’s leaching carbon and it’s baking hard. If we get a summer down pour the water will run straight off into the river.

Hard to imagine that less than 6 months ago this was the exact same spot.

On 20 July 2007 I was a few miles from the marsh. It was raining. A lot.

On my way home I crossed into the Kennet valley from the slightly higher ground just to the south, around Grazeley. Everywhere was at a standstill. Nobody could move. The floodwater reached from our marsh south almost to the motorway. The 1/4 mile wide and then otherwise bone dry marsh now extended for 2 miles.

Over 4 inches of rain fell on the town. It was catastrophic.

You would have thought that the authorities would have done something about that risk by now. They haven’t. They’ve published reports and they’ve had meetings. None of which have made a difference.

A while ago the council released £50,000 to improve the path that runs across the marsh from Fobney Lock to Coley.

I suggested raising it 4 inches. It’s at right angles to the direction of flow of flood water. It would make a nice continuous well surfaced path between where lots of people live and where lots of people work. Imagine being able to walk to work, or to the football and back through the meadows. If nothing else it might save a few car trips.

More importantly if they did that and there was another catastrophic flood it might help a bit by holding back some floodwater. I know a bloke who could do exactly that. So I got them a quote. £10,000 under budget.

They ignored it and opted instead to put pipes under it. To speed up the flow of water. Honestly, and they didn’t even build a continuous path. You can’t walk to work without wellies for 6 months of the year. Or the whole football season.

If that soil stayed moist and soft it would be absorbent. Just keeping it damp would help in the next big flood. Baked hard soil does not absorb water very quickly.

And while we’re baking under the sun we know one thing. Another flood is coming. And there’s no reason why it isn’t bigger than the 2007 flood. In fact there are many reasons why it could be bigger. Much bigger. The oceans are warmer than ever before. That will lead to bigger storms. If they immediately follow this drought we’ll be in trouble. Again.

Of course Marshians are at best a temporary solution. Beavers are more permanent. You should have heard the chuckles in the council chamber when somebody mentioned beavers.

Marshians have a reputation now as a force to be reckoned with. But sadly that force is waning. Like the draining away of the water on the marsh the enthusiasm for actually doing anything has fizzled out.

It’s ever so easy to join up and 200 or more have. But only 10 or so marshians now can survive physical activity in the poisoned atmosphere. And time is running out to stop Himalayan balsam taking over. It’s setting seed now.

Its spread into this huge field. It’s scattered and widespread but give it a chance and it will take over. It is notorious and potentially devastating. It’s extremely hard for 4 or 5 people to search that field and find it. Once found it’s quite easy to pull up and that stops it dead.

In addition to slogging away under a hot sun some earthlings think that pulling it up is spoiling it for everyone else. And that’s because they don’t know how damaging it is. They think it’s pretty. I once heard an expert say that she left a bit because bees like it and the bees that have fed on the balsam nectar produce sweeter honey.

One of the ways that people find out is from the media. Sitting in front of a television or computer is now where they learn. But if a lot of people know a lot about nature they are going to want to defend it. Defending it is awkward if you want to continually grow the economy. There is a point at which the economy can’t grow any more. We might have reached it. But there are billionaires who don’t have enough. Their greed is what focuses government policies. They want more oil and more money and they don’t want more nature.

So they’ve decided to scrap one of the most effective ways of informing and enthusing the population. Winterwatch.

I think this planet might be better off without earthlings. I know it would be. But I know a lot of really nice ones. If only the horrid ones would leap aboard a rocket ship and fly to mars.