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IRECENTLY had lunch with an old lady who once met Town Mouse on a London bus near Oval, which, she told me, is where he lives. Town Mouse implied that it might be tricky for his children to track down a London pheasant in order to make The Prince of Wales’s favourite recipe, pheasant crumble pie (Town & Country, November 21 and ‘My favourite recipe’, November 14). Town Mouse is wrong.

Indeed, Town Mouse can’t live more than a stone’s throw from Oval market, which has a cornucopia of game for sale. Chadwick’s in Balham sells pheasant and does mail order, should he be busy.

In London, you’re supposedly never further than 6ft from a rat. I wonder, during the season, how far a Londoner ever is from a dressed pheasant. Patrick Galbraith, editor of ‘Shooting Times’, London