On the way to school, my daughter spotted a tiny dead shrew on the ground. I wrapped it up, took it along to school and tried to give it to a teacher to show it to their class. None of them was interested, so here it is instead! Apparently, cats kill them for sport as the shrews have an oily flavour they don’t like. I buried the poor little thing, and will unearth it in 4 months, as (another apparently) I’ll end up with a perfect skeleton by then. Something to look forward to…

It took an evening’s effort to turn a couple of kilos of these blackcurrants and Morello cherries, into 11 pots of very thickset jam. It tastes great, and my kids don’t like it, giving me the chance to actually eat some myself.