Walking along the Wansdyke last week we came across about 15 Dexters – the smallest of our native cattle breeds. These are handsome beasts that the Wiltshire Wildlife Trust finds useful in grazing downland to encourage wild flowers to grow.
They had arranged themselves along and across the path along the dyke and we wondered what they would do when we approached them. As we soon found out, they did absolutely nothing. They did look our way but that was it. Fine looking animals and confident in their possession of the space. Not really wild, of course, but useful in encouraging wild things.
Such was their indifference to us that I felt they deserved a collective noun, and I’m proposing an Insouciance.
A report by Doug Bourn (UCL) and Jenny Hatley (Bath Spa) on behalf of the Our Shared World coalition of organisations, was launched the other day. The report gathered evidence of the extent to which the themes of Sustainable Development Goal...
Notes from a Small Town The elected council of my local town likes to present itself as "progressive", usually in comparison to the unitary authority in which it finds itself embedded which is both large C and small c conservative....
I see that the outcomes of the latest universities research assessment exercise [ie, the REF: research excellence framework] have been published today. Thank goodness not to be involved in this. It's a major plus of retirement; indeed the thought of having...