On being fired – and hired – as an editor

Last week was unusual. At the start of it, I was mooching about in the country in my customary way, doing little odd jobs and fretting over the fate of my poultry, which is once again under attack from foxes. I have yet to see a fox in Northamptonshire this year, but the farmer says there is a fox’s lair in an old barn in the park below my house. He sits there with his shotgun most evenings at dusk, but he never seems to get a shot at one. I have to admit there’s no evidence that foxes are responsible for the losses among my flock of ducks, but it’s hard to think who else might be. In the past few weeks, ducks have been disappearing one by one, and now there are only nine of them left out of the previous 14. The call ducks, Boris and Marina, are sorely missed, but otherwise I’ve become so inured to deaths among my poultry that I am now almost unmoved by them. It’s easier if you don’t give them names, so I have stopped doing so; and I even take some small comfort from the savings I’m making on duck food.

I have chickens as well as ducks, but the chickens are faring better. This, I think, is because the ducks live on a pond a hundred yards or so below my house and would be the first birds that a marauding fox from the park would encounter. Having grabbed one or two ducks, the fox may feel that this is enough and that it’s not worth the risk of then going after the chickens that live bang next door to me. Still, one of the chickens also disappeared the other day, which suggests that they remain vulnerable.