Our duty to hope

Life has changed unimaginably over the past few weeks but the glories of spring nourish the soul and allow us to imagine better times ahead

- LAURENCE CATLOW

The little willow warbler’s sad and lovely song is one of the evocative sounds of spring

My previous article (A farewell to foul February, 25 March) concluded: “Things, as they say, can only get better.” I am, of course, now hanging my head in shame because, in the course of the intervening weeks, things have not got better; they have got a whole lot worse.

Life has come to a virtual standstill and anxiety and fear are tangible in the air. It is a time of pain and sickness, of death and grief; but it is also a time of generous service and noble selfsacrifice. It is most certainly not a time to complain that I cannot go fishing or that prospects for the coming shooting season look uncertain at best.

Most of us will fish again and most of us will at some time once again lift a gun to our shoulder on a bright winter’s day. It is a time to think of those who have caught their last trout and those who have brought their last pheasant falling out of the sky.

Of course I am missing my rivers and I hope that things might be more or less back to normal when the time for shooting comes round. But much more than this I am feeling sorrow for the victims of this disease while, for my own part, I am relieved. As yet, no one close to me has fallen sick and I can maintain some sort of contact with the life of nature and with things that matter to me very deeply.

High Park is one of those things. It takes the Land Rover three minutes to make the short journey and I go there with the dogs every morning to let out and feed the hens — Tony puts them away at night — and on alternate days to collect eggs for my own use and for distribution to neighbours even more decrepit than I am.