Country mouse on an artistic weekend

Our country mouse spends the weekend roaming the countryside looking for the perfect subject to paint with his son

Country mouse, Country Life magazine
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Charlie is an artist. He can see beauty where I can't in the textures and colours of a smouldering muck heap or the shapes and contours of broken trees in a smelly pond, but, as his dad, there is nothing better than spending time searching with him for a subject to paint. On Sunday, he wanted a bare, ploughed field with a church spire behind it. When I pointed out that ploughed fields are in short supply at this time of year, he gave me a withering look and questioned the whole farming process.

We set out driving lazily around the lanes of the Meon Valley, shuddering to a halt every time he yelled stop, so that he could sniff the air and assess the vista. ‘Too green' was my cue to drive on past the field of winter barley. In one sleepy lane, we found a dozen squashed frogs embedded in the tarmac, killed as they migrated back to the pond of their birth. ‘But,' said Charlie firmly, ‘that's not what we've come to find.'

Eventually, we did Privett church with its spire soaring above a furrowed field. The farmer who owns the land should be ashamed of his crop, but for the artist, it was a delight.

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.