BY MARGARET ASHWORTH I am not sure if I have ever seen a stoat. Since we have been in Lancashire I have glimpsed one or two animals which could have been stoats but at a distance they could equally have been weasels. Many people will know the unhelpful saying: one is weasily identified, while the other is stoatally different. This is a weasel (Mustela nivalis): … Continue reading On Stoats
BY MARGARET ASHWORTH I have always thought that Good King Wenceslas was about a benevolent old gent trying to spread a little happiness. Wrong. According to the Guardian ‘it glorifies a patriarchal definition of charitable giving that belittles the value of a properly funded welfare state’. In the spirit of Christmas I will admit that the writer seems to have been joking (funny, isn’t it?) but it … Continue reading Good King Wenceslas
BY MARGARET ASHWORTH I find it surprising how few rabbits I see round here in Lancashire – I think I have seen more hares. I am old enough (just) to remember seeing masses of rabbits on lawns nibbling the grass down to the roots. Then came rabbit Armageddon. I have been reading a book enticingly titled Myxamatosis by Peter Bartrip. This was a pandemic if ever there was … Continue reading The Rabbit Pandemic
BY MARGARET ASHWORTH Not long ago a story in the Daily Mail about a collie lost on a mountain referred to it as a b*tch, with an asterisk as if it were an obscenity rather than the correct and harmless word for a female dog. When I read that, I realised that subbing is well and truly dead. It was not just that a sub-editor … Continue reading The Death of Newspaper Subbing
BY MARGARET ASHWORTH Early in the morning of August 29, 1930, 92 years ago yesterday, a way of life came to an end after at least 2,000 years. The last 36 residents of St Kilda, an isolated group of granite islands 100 miles off the west coast of Scotland sometimes called ‘the edge of the world’, were evacuated to the mainland at their own request … Continue reading Farewell to the Edge of the World
BY MARGARET ASHWORTH There are loads of thistles round here but until I started looking closely at them I didn’t realise there were many different types. It is not always easy to identify them from books because they tend to concentrate on the flowers, which are pretty similar. It is the leaves which vary. These are the four main varieties I have found. First is … Continue reading Eating Thistles
