Strong Brew

Photo by Jo Sinclair

Plastic wads with pink bows, red hearts and union jacks are jammed in my letter box imploring me to fill a sack for charity. Weary with winter lurgy, I gather them up and steel myself for another dog walk. I'll fill them with tinnies instead of clothes. Instead of ramping up the miles I tell myself I'll potter about while my dog (who seems to have spring fever, as do the skylarks, corn buntings, robins and pied wagtails) peers into rabbit holes.

I regularly pass a couple of characters on my walks. They see me coming and stand around furtively, blowing fag smoke and rummaging around in carrier bags. I'm not sure if they are contemplating whether or not to take a subtle swig, or finding the right moment to dump their empties, but they've deposited a trail stretching back years.  I find caches of Diamond White, White Star and Special Brew lodged in hollow trees and rabbit warrens and washed up in ditches and streams. They walk miles in search of a bucolic and private spot. So I take the charity collection bags to fill with faded and crumpled tins full of silt from many a flood, but I end up just sitting on a log at the edge of a wood looking at the sun and inhaling the funky smell of fox.

It's a life-affirming stink, the smell of fox. Probably more familiar to townies these days -  an unwelcome fug you can't get rid of after you've come home to find one's had a nap in your bed. I saw a fox striding quickly past the Georgian doorsteps of Islington once, floppy white bunny in its jaws.

Feasting on the cold air I notice it looks like spring. Wild arum, nettles and snowdrops are a few inches tall. I clamber across fallen trees and dip a toe in a boggy ditch that circles the whole wood. In the spoil excavated from the ditch there are many fox holes. The handy hillocks are just like badger setts, a favourite vulpine choice. I watched a vixen run in here last summer. She stared out at me from her green wood for a while before turning tail. Today the hillock is strangely compacted and well-worn. I look for human footprints among the fox and rabbit signs. There's an abandoned hat here, but no booze cans. I put the hat in a bag and later realise the reek of fox has followed me home; seems it was a foxy choice for use as a scent-marking object.