The Idler

A Country Diary - 45

15 May 2006

I HAVE VERY SAD NEWS to report about Rosie Blossom Brownpatch, our lovely bunny. Rosie had been a great companion and provided hours of fun for adults and kids alike. We had grown quite attached to her. She had recently moved from the kitchen to the wilder environment of the yard, where she played with the cats and hens. One day Victoria was slowly driving out of the yard the other day and the rabbit must have been hiding underneath, because we later found her sitting in a corner trailing a limp back leg. Rosie was rushed to the vet where she stayed the night. The vet told us that it would cost £250 to amputate or something like £950 to try and fix the leg up to heal properly. Well OK, we were fond of Rosie, but not that fond. Especially when you consider that a new rabbit would cost just £20. The vet told us that there was even a chance that the rabbit might die from the anaesthetic used in these procedures. So we opted for having the rabbit put down, which would bring our total vet bill to £110.

BUT WE COULDN’T have predicted how upsetting it was to lose the bunny. When a little note arrived from the vet comiserating with us about the sad loss of Rosie, Victoria was in floods of tears. I felt shakey. Even my stealy-hearted mother, who had only spent two days with Rosie, felt very sad when I broke the news. The kids didn’t seem too bothered. I suppose they have not reached the age of sentimentality. “We didn’t cut Rosie’s leg off because it would hurt her too much,” said Delilah. “Now she is dead. Dead means sleeping for ever.”

WE WENT out to buy a new rabbit in an effort to compensate for the loss. This bunny was black and white with slightly poppy eyes. A nice creature, perfectly all right, but somehow not quite the same. Delilah has called it Lizzie Molly Flower Fast Bunny, “because it is a very fast bunny”. It too moved from the kitchen to the yard as soon as it could, where it has made friends with our neighbour’s white bunny, Felicity. Whenever it sees one of us, it darts into a barn. One would have thgouth all these animlas on the loose would make easy picking for the fox.

I WAS ASKED to help out on a local clay pigeon shoot. Arthur and I arrived at around 10am and while Arthur sat the back of someone’s Range Rover playing a computer game - even though it was a beautiful day - I helped put up various fences and whatnot. The the shooters started arriving and it was my turn to press the little button when they shouted - pull! - The shooters all brought their own guns and they were quite a wild bunch, very friendly, I suppose mostly farmer’s sons. Soon I graduated to scoring. There was a storm and I stood there in the rain, my biro feebly trying to make an impression on the soaking paper. Well, I still hadn’t had a go myself but when the shooting was all over, and the company had assembled by the tea van for the prize-giving ceremony, the man organising the shoot asked me if I wanted a go. One of the farmer’s sons lent me his gun. We put two cartridges in the barrels and I was told the rudiments. I stood pointing my gun in the air. Nothing happened. Then I heard someone murmuring and remembered that I was supposed to shout - pull! - which I did and, miraculously, hit the clay pigeon. I shouted - pull - again, lined up the hurtling object, pulled the trigger and - blam! - hit it again. There was a cheer from the throng and I handed my gun back to the young man who had lent me his. “Never seen a man pick up a gun for the first time and shoot two in a row.” At last, respect.

I HAD ANOTHER exciting day out last Friday. Earlier in the year, the Village Hall Committee had organised for a man called Kester Webb to put on a slideshow of pictures he had taken while climbing the Exmoor cliffs. I put myself on his mailing list and subsequently was invited to join him on an easy climb to a hidden cove, where we would observe nesting seabirds. Six of us, all men, assembled in the car park at 10am. Kester handed out the climbing harnesses and we walked down the coast path. Then Kester pointed to his right where you could just about make out the ghost of a path. “We’re going down there,” he said and so began our off-piste adventure. Soon we attached ourselves to ropes and clambered down the cliff paths. I discovered that there is quite a lot of sitting around doing nothing involved in climbing. You have to sit waiting while each man comes down the path. Then you have to sit around faffing with equipment, tying up ropes and the like. Rather like that other so-called activity, fishing, climbing seems to be excuse for people to spend some time with nature. And the nature down there was stunning. When we reached the beach we looked up to see hundreds of nesting birds, guillemots, razorbills, herring gulls and fulmars. There was a pair of peregrine falcons circling overhead, sometimes getting attacked by the gulls. The fulmars, a kind of albatross, would circle us and make botched attempts to land on the cliffs. “I bet you didn’t know you had albatrosses living so near you,” said Kester. As we clambered over the rocks, we came across three nests, each containing three grey speckled eggs. The bay was filled with wild flowers, red campion and bladder campion, thrift, orchids, primroses and daisies. Perhaps all the guano made the area particularly lush. Certainly it was stunning to see how well and how beautifully life thrives when left alone by man.

IN THE VEGETABLE garden things are thriving. Now Mr Fukuoka doesn’t bother with rotation. He just lets the vegetables grow up together higgledy-piggledy. With potatoes, for example, he just leaves a few in the earth each year and lets them grow up again. I have noticed something similar: I must have missed a few potatoes last year, because there are four or five haulms growing up in last year’s potato patch. So this year, instead of pulling them up and throwing them away because they don’t fit my rotation plan, I am going to leave them there. Why waste free potatoes, and potatoes which have grown with no effort from me whatsoever? This is the no-work way. Another experiment involved the French climbing beans. Instead of growing these in bought compost, I scraped up the powdery stuff from the bottom of the hen house and started them off in this. They grew fast and quick. I have planted three of them among the strawberries and lettuce patch in the front garden and the rest among the peas. I think I sowed some sweet pea seeds somewhere, too, but I now forget where.