Rain, on and on today, from the early hours till noon, and chilly too, feeling even colder with a stiff breeze. And rain the day before too. People often ask is this due to climate change. And that’s not an easy question to answer. Rainy periods are not unusual. We are, after all, an island. What climate change does is make heavy rain increasingly likely, heavier and more often.
Warm air holds more moisture. But you may have noted, I said it is chilly. Well, moisture in the air is picked up over the sea, mostly the Atlantic and that retains its summer warmth well into late autumn. Warm air also has more energy, which gives us fierce winds and storms. Around the country there has been some very wet weather, with extensive flooding in places like Looe in Cornwall:
Looe town at times is the Venice of the West: knee-deep in water which rises from sandy foundations beneath the streets, emerging from storm drains designed to take water away but which work just as well in reverse. These floods are a frequent occurrence – so much so that Looe has the dubious honour of being the most frequently flooded town in the entire United Kingdom.
https://behaviourchangecornwall.co.uk.
Looe is on the coast, so is hit often by squalls off the Atlantic. Inland, we have flooding when rivers burst their banks. This may be due to high ground around a town, such as Lewes in East Sussex, where heavy rain rushes off the hills and floods the low areas of the town. Around the country, the Met Office has issued 60 flood warnings.
In Forest Gate, we are well away from rivers. The Thames is five miles away, the Lea about three miles off. I have not known flooding in the 50 years I have lived here. I can’t imagine the area flooding, but the degree of global warming remains on the increase. 1.5° is history; there is talk now of 2.5 degrees or more. We can stop the worst of it, but we need to get serious, individually and collectively.
Is it Witch’s Tree or Witches’ Tree? Most sources on line go for the latter. Though, it is arguable, as the name would initially have been passed on aurally. So what did the original teller mean? One witch, several or many, who knows? With these things, we get the phenomena of sites copying sites. If you were inclined, with nothing better to do, you could attempt tracing ‘witches’ back to the first writer on line and then ask where he/she got it from. But it would be a waste of your time, as we know it isn’t true. Witch or witches never did use the tree. It’s a story, a folk tale, and such stories can go here and there with bits added or changed over time. My inclination is to go for one witch as I find it easier to imagine one, like in Hansel and Gretel, than a coven of them.
I doubt I’ll have a spell put on me.
Having written about the Witch’s Tree, it was suggested I did a walk there. So I am doing a four mile walk, there and back, from the Garden, on Sunday, 27 September, a few days before Halloween, when the witches are said to fly off before All Hallows Day which is the feast of all saints. We’ll start the walk at 1pm, and if the rain keeps up, anyone accompanying me will need boots or wellingtons.