We'll tak a mug o' kindness yet, For auld lang syne

Being up with the blackbird for an absurdly early start at work I heard this morning's Farming Today live, presented by one Dr. David Gregory-Kumar (recipient, several years back, of a 'You Betcha!' mug from our very own David Preiser. Wonder if he still has it?). I was so surprised by some of the statistics on UK salmon farming that I made a mental note to share them with you here. 

Farmed salmon - an industry that's been around for some forty years now - accounts for around 40% of the value of Scotland's food exports. It's worth £2 billion to the UK economy. This year it's set to become the UK's largest food export, with some £650 million-worth of salmon being exported to 64 countries. That's quite something, isn't it?

It's controversial though. Anglers and fish conservationists have big problems with it, and a fair airing of both sides of the argument was given today. (Credit where credit's due, and all that).

All very interesting, if you're interested in such things (as I am). And this fine feature apparently kicks off a week of pieces on Farming Today looking at salmon, which I won't be listening to live as I ain't getting up that early for work again any time soon, if I can possibly help it! 

I've got my fingers firmly crossed though that there will not be a feature this week focusing on 'concerns' that salmon will stop jumping up rivers like the Severn, the Lune, the Tweed, the Tay and the Dee or some such thing after Brexit as I really don't want to start worrying that my supply of wild salmon, caught on Lune by a friend, will dry up simply because I failed to heed the wise words of white, middle-class, tuition-fee raising old men like Sir Vincent Cable.

By the way, David G-K, a self-professed "salmon enthusiast", says that he'll be "once again standing with other salmon enthusiasts by the River Severn, just south of Shrewsbury, "watching the salmon fling themselves up over the weir as they arrive back from the icy Atlantic and head up the warmer river waters to spawn". 

Sounds like a good day out to me. Maybe I should pop down, surprise him, say 'hello' and ask him about David's mug - unless, on popping down, I immediately see him drinking from a 'You Betcha!' mug, in which case I won't bother, and will have to talk salmon and BBC bias instead. 

P.S. Talking about salmon...

I'm just watching the sunset tonight over Morecambe Bay from my window. 

A few minutes ago the sky was a mix of light blue, incandescent orange and dark grey clouds tinged with purple. Now the light blue has spread, the orange has turned salmon pink and the shrinking clouds (just declared "the globe's most purple clouds" by the Guinness Book of World Records) are turning deep purple. And now the salmon in the sky has returned to the sea (unlike actual adult salmon who, if they succeed, make love upstream to the crooning of Fish from Marillion and then, alas, die. Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis) and it's all weak light blue, a weary time-for-bed patch of halfhearted yellow, and micro-clouds where the purple is becoming grimly, brush-your-teeth grey again (prompting the purple-obsessed Guinness Book of World Records mob to shake their heads and walk off in disgust).

I do love living in Morecambe.