UK Fungi lengthen breeding seasons with milder winters and spring.

Alan Gange at Royal Holloway, University of London and his dad, on the basis of studies on 315 naturally resident fungi around Sunny Salisbury by his dad, Edward Gange says many fungi appear to have doubled the length of their breeding season over 50 years from 33 to 74 days. As a consequence of higher temperatures many species now appear above ground in July, and due to scarcity of ground frosts can continue breeding into December, some fruiting twice a year.

Gange says lack of spring maintains allows the underground maintenance of the mycelium resulting in fruiting in March to May.For example in the 50's the February average was 3.5C and this last decade it has been 5.2C.

In many respects, this dramatic change may have positive ecological effects, says young Gange. "Mushrooms provide a huge food resource for insects, which themselves are food for birds," he says. Accelerate decomposition of wood and leaf matter, also provides for rapid release of soil nutrients for plants.

However Edward Gange , whilst convinced the climate is changing - at least within a 30km radius of Salisbury - he sensibly prefers to attribute the warming to natural cycles rather than humanity's production of greenhouse gases.(it won't stop others from drawing that inference however)

"When I was a lad, it was an absolutely categorical fact that Red Admirals would not survive the winter," he said.

"This year we saw them on 19 January. That's a heck of a change, and it's not the only one."

Here on Lord Patel's Northern Estates, no Red Admirals have been seen but Peacocks (see pic)(butterflies not birds) have been enjoying the spring sunshine for over a month.

As a stonemason Edward will have seen many cemeteries, they are a rich source of sightings of both fungi and orchids, because they both prefer undisturbed soil. Increasingly however they suffer from dog-walkers who thoughtlessly damage them and whose left over dog turds with high acid content have a dire long term soil sterilising effect.

You can read the same story in BBC Online which has a hugely patronising piece about how old, retired Edward (a retired stonemason) learnt how to set up Excel spreadsheets(Wow!) and type in mountains of his historical data (Oooooh!) - as if using a PC was some act of incredible talent and skill - the schools are full of 7 year olds who can do that.... panzer divisions of grey panthers lurk out there , having swapped Local radio phone ins for on line Forums about group sex and jam making.

Tourist Attraction - Artwork ? Gormley's "Another Place"

A benign day - off to Crosby to see Antony Gormley's Another Place as Sefton Council have voted to remove this extraordinary beachcape of 100 cast iron statues below and above the tideline on 3 kilometres of (usually deserted) Crosby Beach by the end of November.

They are all located South of the sewage outfall just North of the HM Coastguard look out at Hall Drive where there is a very busy car park complete with hot dog seller and ice cream van ... and extensive but temporary toilet facilities.
It's a holiday crowd, young gauche lovers photographing each other by the statues, noisy children, splashing in the puddle which the wave scour has provided for nearly every iron man.

Cyclists, joggers, dog walkers, irritating All Terrain Vehicles and overhead fleets of kites and a single powered hang glider.

The very busy main shipping channel runs in front of th beach, the men and the coastguard, pilots collected, container ships, guided into Seaforth Docks past the whirling onshore wind trubines. Offshore the Burbo Bank offshore wind farm takes shape with £10 MN of Lottery Funds - which Seimens, one of the largest companies in the world are happy to accept in payment.
Gormley was born in London in 1950, the youngest of seven children, to a German mother and devout Catholic Irish father, who ran the first pharmaceutical company to sign a contract with Alexander Fleming for the commercial production of penicillin. The family was wealthy, there was a cook and a chauffeur at the Hampstead Garden Suburb home overlooking the golf course, and Gormley's father was an art lover.

This location, has echoes therefore, near to Ampleforth where he was educated by the Jesuits before Cambridge and 3 years on the hippie trail in India - it was the denizens of the wealthy Fylde coast, the golf players at the East Lancashire Golf Club who will be happy to see the statues go and their unwelcome claque of admirers.

Crosby is being resurrected, building of swish flats, handy for the rapid rail line into Liverpool are rising relentlessly. Re vamped Victorian mansions are gentrified, split up or levelled. A new organic delicatessen / foodie shop "The Picked Walnut" opned 4 weeks ago.

"They bring the visitors in says the optimistic proprietor", but it's half term, "we miss the school run". The blonde, sunglassed pilots of the Islington Tractors having dropped offf the kids at the famous and hugely successful Merchant Taylors School. The proud mothers of the kids pushed into the network of feeder crammers picking up their Game pies, Turrills Asparagus Potato Crisps and a handy bottle of Barolo to remind them of Tuscany.

The crowds, are unwelcome. A close reading of this week's "Crosby News" confirms it. Eight to six the Council Committee voted. Fuck Sefton Council and Liverpool's European Capital of Culture celebrations looming in 2008 and the 4th Liverpool Biennial this Year.

Leave us in a Betjemanesque seaside, gentle pootering peace, inheritors of the fortunes built on shipping, and a long forgotten cotton trade.

The Statues ? Unimpressed.... but I found some uncommon fungi on the sandhills overlooking the Tiger Woods wannabes.