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Note on cloud and rain
I’m driving away from Middleton where I’ve spent most of the day surveying for otters. The weather has been clear and bright, with the sun bouncing off the river in glittering bursts. Joyous. Now heading west towards Yoxford I can see the sky is darkening. When people talk about the heavens opening I have always pictured…
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Tracks and treasure at Knettishall Heath
This is a country diary piece written for Suffolk Magazine When I first saw the Exmoor ponies they were more murmuration than herd. Galloping hard across this ancient furzy heath, they formed a twisting, athletic ribbon of dun browns and treacle blacks; their hooves pounding through the heather and into my ribcage. In truth, I think…
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Note on snow
The snow is coming down diagonally. Driving hard. Gusts of wind swirling fat bumblebee flakes round road signs and street lights before hurrying them away into the dark. The cat appears at the window, doing its best to look pleading. He wants in. Seconds later he is in front of the fire drying off, nose…
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A squelch that becomes a river
This was a country diary piece written for Suffolk Magazine written after a visit to Suffolk Wildlife Trust’s Redgrave & Lopham Fen. The water is welling up under my boots. With each footstep it oozes out from great sponges of sphagnum moss and washes over my toecaps; sometimes crystal clear, sometimes coppery, sometimes peaty black. I…
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Dingle Marshes to Doggerland
This was a country diary piece written for Suffolk Magazine. It is a day of bluster and blow, of boiling sea and blistering spray. A time when the coast is truly alive; its shingle pulse roaring and racing with the tide. I’m walking into the wind and on to the shingle ridge that forms the…
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Morning fog
A morning of fog. The temperature feels colder, but still not bitter. The air is sweet with sugar beet, its turnipy fug clinging to my car as I creep towards the A14. The road is busy and slow. Headlamps, brake lights and shifting layers of ground-scraping grey. By the time I reach work the sun…
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Washing away the old year
My five-year-old daughter enters the river first. Elbows pumping and knees lifted high, she dashes in, her excited shrieks turning to loud yelps of surprise as the chill shoots through her. I follow close behind, my feet instantly numb as they plunge into the tannin brown water. I find myself laughing with my daughter; laughing…
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If we value hares, we shouldn’t shoot them all year long
This piece first appeared in the East Anglian Daily Times in response to the selling of hare locally. I’ve since had some criticism from the NFU about not mentioning hare coursing. I didn’t touch on the subject of coursing here as it is something that is thankfully illegal and – judging by the number of listings…
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An otter of my imagination
The bats appear out of the twilight, like shadows made solid. Flitting and falling at tremendous speeds over the water, they melt into the evening sky before taking form again as they belt after the midges that form low-lying, nibbling clouds above the hide. As one makes a tie-fighter dive across our line of vision Sam…
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An allegory on asylum
This piece was first published in the East Anglian Daily Times as a commentary on the county’s and the country’s attitudes to asylum seekers. Some of those commenting below the line conflated the issue with immigration (as the Government has also chosen to) but there you go – you can’t win them all. Oh those scrounging…
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Matt Gaw 