Junction 36

Always choices on Whitbarrow.

What’s your favourite walking season? I think autumn’s the finest. Admirers of the gaudy, bright green gambols of spring, giddy with embryonic excitement might beg to differ. So might lovers of long summer days of coastal, lake or riverside rambles, liberally laced with ice creams and beer gardens. Winter’s hardy fans would hold that nothing beats the pristine silence of fresh snowfall in a woodland wonderland, though such scenes are fewer and further between these days.

Autumn, however, never fails to deliver. Nature’s psychedelic fireworks are lit by the sun’s annual departing gift, a golden veil of shimmering radiance, whose waning beams still hold enough warmth to defer the hat and gloves, whilst making our upward exertions less of a spectacle for the viewing public. It was freakish warm for mid-November, pounding up Whitbarrow today mind, but the dazzling colours and murky aromas were bang on season.

Been a good year for these monkeys.

I read this morning that the O2 website had crashed due to ‘extraordinary demand for Peter Kay tickets.’ What’s that all about? A stout, middle-of-the-road Boltonian comedian with a clever turn of phrase has become the biggest live entertainment draw in Britain? Are we that starved of fresh talent? Is this still the country that liked its comedy as subversive as it could get it?

Take a look at what passes for comedic output on our main channels in these queer times and it’s safe to say Monty Python, Vic & Bob, the comic strip and even Blackadder would scare the wits out of today’s commissioning editors. Will we ever see the likes of Basil Fawlty or Graham Lister again or is the parrot well and truly deceased?

Parrot sketch, Monty Python 1969