Let’s put aside our differences

Thanks to a raucous rookery outside my bedroom window, a wildfowler’s internal alarm clock and a middle-aged bladder, my 4am reveille was no great hardship. I beat the rooks to the punch and was drinking coffee before they woke and, as I bounced down the drive, the BBC World Service on the truck radio informed me it was 05:00 GMT. Driving the few miles to Flea Barn with the window wide open was a delicious treat in the milky post-dawn light, made fresh by the overnight rain.

As I pulled up on the concrete pad by the grain store, the cock pheasants held a shouting match and the skylarks made their first sorties of the day in their jerky vertical way, joyously telling the world they had survived another night.

Mark Nowers’s car pulled up alongside my truck. Immediately