The people on The Times letters desk get frightfully upset if you talk about cuckoos. They tell you that The Times has never run correspondence about the first cuckoo: that the whole thing is fantasy, urban myth, and as such deeply unfair to the newspaper. It all harks back to ancient days when a cuckoo… [Read More]

You can find happiness is a small piece of corrugated metal. “Do you want these?” I asked my neighbour Tony. He was parking at my place at the time and his trailer held three ragged chunks of the stuff, each about a yard square. “I was going to throw them away,” he said. So I… [Read More]

I was always a little annoyed that Pink Floyd stole the title for their first album from The Wind in the Willows when it was released back in 1967. They were never my band, even though Astronomy Domine and Interstellar Overdrive were tracks that could make a chap’s head spin. My heart was always with… [Read More]

I wonder how we ever got the idea of the countryside as a place of peace. As a place where we leave the stresses and dangers of life behind and find a world of gentleness and calm. The song of the warblers, the jinking swallows overhead, the butterflies: Maytime and the livin’ is easy… Try… [Read More]