I broke my toe over the new year, which has brought a quiet start to 2023. There have been no long walks on the Downs, no runs on the beach. Instead, I hobble with the dog around a park behind my house.
A former brick quarry and landfill site, the park is only so because subsidence issues mean it can’t be built on. There’s a field where children and dogs play (not always in harmony), two patches of trees we call “the woods”, some weedy rose beds and a bank of brambles and nettles. It’s a bit unloved, a bit rough around the edges. Because there are brambles there are hedgehogs, and I am grateful for them. Because there’s an unruly privet hedge there are house sparrows, which surprise dog walkers with loud cheeps at dusk. Sometimes there are chiffchaffs and black redstarts, long-tailed tits and great-spotted woodpeckers. In late summer, I watched dogs gambol around a shopping trolley while a swallow quartered over the grass for insects – a last supper before heading south across the Channel.
