Something shocking happened on my walk this morning.
It is still gloriously sunny here, albeit with a malicious little wind nipping at fingertips, and so I did not dawdle on my trot over the fells. I had just reached the gate which takes me up my recently-included third steep bit, when I heard the oddest noise.
It was high pitched, continuous, but not a bird, and it seemed to be coming from the beck at the bottom.
Obviously I went over to investigate, and to my astonishment, discovered a terrible fight happening on the bank.
A water vole had caught a frog. It had grabbed its webbed foot in its teeth, and was trying to drag it under the water.
The frog was not only fighting. It was screaming.
I have never heard a frog scream before, and I would not like to hear it again. It was an awful, piteous noise.
Both of them saw me at the same moment and the fight halted as suddenly as if I had sauntered up going Ello Ello Ello Wot’s Goin On Ere Then? The vole dived back under the water, and the frog scrambled frantically away up the bank, where it collapsed, panting and trembling, presumably trying to catch its breath.
I would have liked to warn it to hop a bit further away, but decided it was none of my business and left it to nurse its sore foot.
Nature is a very horrible thing. Poor terrified frog, and poor, hungry vole. I am very glad I am not likely to meet my own end by being eaten alive by something with savage sharp teeth.
Fortunately such horrors are safely packaged away from my own experience by the nice people at Booths, who do not let me see the scenes of blood and terror and poo, but who hack the bits up on my behalf, and then make everything look appealing in dainty plastic trays with un-threatening writing on the label and twee pictures of the countryside.
That, incidentally, for those who have not heard it, was one of my very favourite Stephen Fry jokes. What is the definition of Countryside? The murder of Piers Morgan. This still makes me laugh even now, which is why I have stolen it for these pages.
In any case I do not really eat meat much. Mostly I eat fish. It is much easier to think that fish do not have feelings because they are not cuddly with peculiarly blank eyes and unreadable expressions. We find it much easier to be heartless about fish, and I have known otherwise civilised people to think it is perfectly all right to boil lobsters alive, which on reflection, might be one of the most wicked acts imaginable.
That is not why I eat fish. I eat fish because it does not need cooking, and because it makes me feel as though I am healthy even though it is obvious that I am considerably more rotund than I ought to be, and that I get out of breath if I have to run up the stairs.
Also I like it, obviously.
We did not eat fish tonight. We have had a night off. Not just from fish-eating, but from taxis and drunk people. This has been magnificent. Mark cooked pasta with pesto and cheese, and we had a whole bottle of wine. None of this has helped the rotundity to diminish, but I don’t care. I am feeling superbly well-fed.
Oliver arrived home shortly after we had eaten, and helped with the wine. He was going to come on Tuesday, but was having a happy holiday in Bath, and so he arrived home late tonight.
It is ace to have him home. He is tall and energetic and funny. He is going to help Mark with the camper van tomorrow.
The camper van is another story altogether.
I will save that one for tomorrow.
