How to enjoy your environment

I may be wrong, but I don't think there has ever been an anti-blood sports demonstration against angling. We are told that it is the most popular sport in these islands, that up to three million people go forth regularly hoping to stick a hook through a fish's eye or mouth, pull it about on the end of a li ne for a while and subsequently beat it to death on a stone or throw it back wounded. And yet no one marches in protes!. Where are the smoke bombs drifting down our salmon streams? Where are the diversionary tins of worms thrown into the middle of angling contests? Why does nobody toss thunderflashes under the gumboots of the death-dealing fisherman?

He brought the gun up to his shoulder with that easy single swing that betokens long practice, innate skill, and flawless self-confidence- in that one flash- ing instant snapping back both hammers even as his unflinching eye lined itself up along the blued barrel. The animal watched lzim, transfixed, at point-blank range.

I was out foraging with Brock along the foreshore W ednesday last, keeping a weather eye out for the first of the flat-nosed waders. They generally follow the muscovy drakes and greylags in about this time of year, looking for tit-bits in amongst the reeds. There was a heavy mist, and the suggestion of snow, tumbling onto the topsoil like the whitened ash off a bonfire settling clown on the crocus shoots. Both of us wrapped up warm against the chi!!.

There is no denying the "otherness" of the country. What we townees call the sky, that plastic dome, exhaust- blue by day and sodium-yellow by night, propped up by chimney pots, church spires and office blocks, scissored into jigsaw patterns like fluorescent tubes, does not exist outside the city boundaries. There it actually touches the earth on ail sides and across this vast canvas all kinds of operatic effects are staged. Clouds, like runaway boulders of mashed potato, erupt onto the horizon, streak low over- head and vanish again below the edge of the world.

Unspoiled village, close by new M4 Motorway. Easy access.

How to choose your family

A comprehensive Dictionary of Labour Biography, on the lines of the Dictionary of National Biography, is in preparation, according to The Times. Living persons will not be included, which means that the following entries (though newly revised) must be held up indefinitely

"The fire which destroyed the British Museum yesterday is thought to have been started by a Luton man protesting about his arthritis."- Forthcoming News Item