Tales of the City

I've been blogging here for many years now – since before I had anything published; before I even started writing a book. Fragments of things I wrote here found their way into Clay; I've mined these blog posts, too, to help me remember what the natural...

Last night, a fox came and took one of the four hens I've been looking after in Dorset. It wasn't a surprise; he'd already paid a daylight visit, in which he'd been unsuccessful, and the hen he took was injured and had chosen to spend the night in the...

Earlier this week I was told, on Twitter, to "choose a side". We're awash with sides at the moment, aren't we? Leave vs Remain, Corbynista vs social democrat, radical vs liberal feminism, new Ghostbusters vs old Ghostbusters... the list goes on.
This, though, was in relation to one of the most complex and divisive issues in UK conservation, namely hen harriers and driven grouse shooting. I am not going to rehearse the landscape of this conflict here – partly because to do so would doubtless...

It's variously known as cow-weed or cow parsnip, alderdrots, bilder, caddy, eltrot or old-rot; kirk, chirk or keks; and rather delightfully, limperscrimps, and it's in flower right now on roadsides, hedgerows and field margins right across the country...