The last man in England

There was heat in the late afternoon sun and the water, as it ran in across the mud, shone in swirls of old gold. Two miles across the Medway, on the Isle of Grain, six great towers, which once refined 11 million tonnes of crude oil a year, were silhouetted against the sky.

“Mike put up our hide almost without looking”

Half an hour earlier, we didn’t think we were going to be wildfowling at all. When you’re out on the Medway, you need a boat and the lock on Mike Swan’s old white vessel had tightened completely. For half an hour, we shouted at it, called it a bastard and messed around with a rusty pair of monkey grips that were never