Country mouse - Mark Hedges

Mark is torn between a chance to attack the wildly overgrown lawn and an offer to spend a blissful evening fishing on the Itchen

Country mouse, Country Life magazine
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For the first time since their departure, I miss our two goats. Not for themselves, of course they were the most destructive animals on earth but because they ate grass. Without them, the amount of grass that needs cutting has doubled. The wettest May for 40 years has made mowing impossible for weeks. You could take a decent silage crop off my lawn.

Finally, on Friday, it stopped raining and the grass dried. That evening, I could attack the grass at last. Then John rang to ask if I wanted to go fishing on the Itchen. I had a rare brainwave, and rang Harry, my son, who was on half term, to see if he would cut the grass, but he told me that he was revising for his exams highly unlikely, but the perfect get out answer. Now I was in a real dilemma.

Two hours later, I had landed a beautiful trout that I had hooked under some alder bushes, watched a sparrowhawk dash up the river snapping at mayflies, and, finally, watched the sun turn the river to liquid gold. Next year, none of us will remember the jungle that is now my lawn, but I will always recall my evening on the river.

Country Life

Country Life is unlike any other magazine: the only glossy weekly on the newsstand and the only magazine that has been guest-edited by HRH The King not once, but twice. It is a celebration of modern rural life and all its diverse joys and pleasures — that was first published in Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee year. Our eclectic mixture of witty and informative content — from the most up-to-date property news and commentary and a coveted glimpse inside some of the UK's best houses and gardens, to gardening, the arts and interior design, written by experts in their field — still cannot be found in print or online, anywhere else.