Category: Notes from the sticks

TODAY’S topic has fascinated me since childhood – how do seemingly flimsy plants manage to drill through solid tarmac as if it is butter? Looking this up on the internet, … Continue readingForce of nature

TRAVELLING by Northern Trains is not the most thrilling experience. The company was doing so badly in terms of timekeeping and cancellations under its previous operator that it was taken … Continue readingAction Stations

I’VE always been rather smug about not having a lot of trouble from insect bites. Companions have sometimes been bitten all over while I remain relatively unscathed. Last week I … Continue readingFinger food for biting bugs

HERE in Lancashire we have had the most glorious weather for weeks. There has been an easterly breeze most of the time which has kept it perfect. One advantage of … Continue readingMr Bullhead, the ‘new man’ of fish

SOON after we moved from Bromley to Lancashire ten or 11 years ago (it was such a ghastly protracted business that I have blocked out the details) we started to … Continue readingWhitey, is that you?

IF it is possible to have a least favourite plant, mine is bracken. And I will be seeing a lot more of it before long, because when ‘rewilding’ comes to … Continue readingWith fronds like these, who needs enemies?

STONE walls are very common round here, some of them proper traditional dry stone, some with a bit of mortar in the centre and some with mortar throughout, like a … Continue readingWithin these walls

BEFORE Covid, before even the spectre of nuclear war, there were posters in every public building warning about another dire threat to the British way of life. It was less … Continue readingBeetlemania

IT is bluebell time and the roadside verges here in Lancashire are full of flowers. But all is not as it seems. A friend sent me this glorious picture of … Continue readingBluebell hanky-panky

THE ‘rewilding’ mania is becoming more worrying and more sinister. Until fairly recently it was easy to laugh at the crazy idea of bringing beavers back to Britain some centuries … Continue readingSheep Hater of the Week