Country mouse goes fishing on the River Rother

The blackbirds are having a well-deserved feast of cherries after delighting all of us with their dawn chorus for the past few months. The blackbird is usually the first of the songsters to clear its throat in the morning and certainly has one of the prettiest songs. The cherry trees are in the Waitrose car park in Petersfield, which is also notable in having a storm drain filled with wild brown trout. It’s amazing what you can find in the most unlikely places if you bother to look.

These trout led me to buying blind a year’s fishing on a tiny stretch of the River Rother at an auction of promises at my daughter’s school. My thinking went that if they can survive in the drain, there must be some trout in the river it drains into. Since April, I’ve been fishing several times and only once failed to connect with a plump, glistening trout. It’s brought me an enormous amount of pleasure as nobody has bothered to fish the little stretch of this unfashionable river in recent years. Left to its own devices, Nature has created a haven for kingfishers, wrens and mallards to raise their young. Nature only needs to be given a chance and it will deliver.

Spectator: Give us this day

Why do all supper guests bring bread, wonders Lucy Baring.

Town mouse visits the new McCrum Yard

In Eton’s Yard.