Black Friday darkens our green and pleasant land

FORGET the doleful cries of the eco-doomsters. The English countryside still has a wealth of wildlife.

From a cottage window in Haworth this week I saw wood pigeon, blackbirds, magpies, robins, wrens, sparrows, blue and coal tits and a multi-coloured jay.

A squawking male pheasant strutted in and out of the bushes like it owned the place, while a lone rabbit dived for cover.

Squirrels, too. Alas, not the red but the aggressive American grey that have usurped – almost killed off, in fact – our native breed. Fearless and tremendously agile, they defy the laws of gravity to get at the bird food.

It’s been warm, and a flowering cherry in the garden is doing what it says on the tin – or branch, in this case – blooming while all around trees drop their leaves, russet, red and brown.

Our brief weekend by a small wood reassures me that Mother Nature is alive and kicking. So why are all eco-systems described as fragile? Not on the River Worth, near Keighley, they’re not.

It was bliss, too, to enjoy a real coal fire, even if it was fuelled with those briquettes they used to have on steam engines. The climate change police will be after me.

It felt like Christmas, which I suppose it was with family around. The idyll is now over and tomorrow we’re back in the cruel world of Black Friday.

In my view, that’s what it really is: a dark, exploitative time.

Wordsworth, the great poet of nature and landscape, got it right:

“The world is too much with us; late and soon

“Getting and spending we lay waste our powers;

“Little we see in Nature that is ours.”