There is an all purveying  sense of innocent pride in this family business. Self titling themselves ‘The First Family of India Cuisine’ these celebrity quotes adorn the outside menu, the indoor menu and the website. Once an exceptionally good value and popular eat in / take away corner Indian, founded in 1977, it has metamorphosed into a grand eating establishment on the back of such recognition. In fact, it’s so grand it can hardly squeeze itself into it end of terrace abode. If more than four people wait for their many tables, you are left standing.

The backlit stone lions outside the entrance and uniformed doorman ignore its modest two up two down provincial town residential surrounds and glint a flavour of London sophistication. The illuminated gold menu pedestal is quite ridiculous, suggesting a pedestrian flow of bankers, tourists and day trippers when any daytime hour can expect no more than perhaps the mother from 33 off to catch the 44 or a few bored kids ambling to the park for footie. Still, it provides a piss point for the drunken students returning to their digs of an evening.

The locals have lost their prize possession of a fantastic value take-away along with their parking spaces to the 4×4 Cotswold set. The self proclaimed King of Indians is not so much disrespectful of its locality, I think it now pretends it does not exist. The once popular commoner has become self appointed king and mixes in different circles now.

The one time I last visited followed its celebrity exposure and you had to book a table weeks in advance. This was – and I am guessing – several years ago. It was buzzing and you could sense the excitement and energy of the staff. It must have been a sensational and almost bewildering time for them. But this evening, and note it was a Friday, it was half empty.

Passion, fame and excitement create the buzz and endless chatter. Back then it had been enjoying recognition as one of the Top 17 Best Local Restaurants on Ramsay’s F word and of course this led to lots of local word of mouth, newspaper features, radio, texts and mobile calls. Inevitably, what we cannot have – what is so popular it is booked up for weeks – we want even more. Human nature. The irony of its featuring on that programme of course is it ejaculated itself from any sense of being local the moment it found its fame beyond its loyal and loving locals who nominated it!

But sustaining and refreshing the excitement and the buzz is the difficult challenge.  Their prices are as high as they could possibly take them. Most main courses are over £20. Our meal for four – and we only had two starters and one bottle of wine  and a couple of beers – was something over £160.00.

They now risk – or are indeed suffering – the backlash. I took a look at Tripadvisor:

We ordered the chicken curry special & it was nothing more than a gravy and a naan. Honesty, i wouldn’t even pay 7 pounds for it, which they charge 23 pounds. my wife ordered a briyani (again 23 pounds) we had only half as its probably the worst briyani we ever had.

I think they are playing a game with people visiting the area by just advertising heavily on hotel guides. My honest recommendation for anyone interested in going to this place is STAY AWAY.. This place just doesn’t deserve or stand by what it says

I was excited to return and deflated. Perhaps my expectation was too high. But this time the chatter had thinned and I could see the reality: a successful family Indian that had chased its self seeking publicity with ever higher prices and profit and is now in danger of sitting on its own desert island, stranded from its once loving adoring doorstep population as a lonely celebration venue: an expensive cobweb waiting to juice the occasional boated fly.

At the end of the meal, they pass round a guest book. So this is how they attained those quotes from Palin and Branson?! They had fancied a curry during the Cheltenham Literature Festival, enjoyed a drink or two and then been thrust a Guest Book to comment in. Signed and dated, their quote has since emblazoned all. And on looking up the Ramsay quote, well let’s not forget they failed to win the competition on the F word.

You cannot deny the Krori family have passion and create exceptional Indian cuisine, Bangladeshi to be precise. But the storm of chatter their celebrity endorsements unleashed is waning and visitors are reminded of that age old formula: product versus price.  I would have liked the menus explained, some seasonals or specials. Instead of the cheap and meaningless truffles given to sweeten the bill, I would have liked to have left table my taste buds lingering passion and creative flair. I would have enjoyed a surprise or two – events to make the evening memorable and to feel Curry Corner is a creative hothouse and more than the contents of their lidded white porcelain pots they piled our tables with, never to return to enquire over the contents.

This all goes to show the power of celebrity endorsement in creating buzz and chatter. The celebrities have left Curry Corner along with the owner’s once notorious modesty, their loyal locals leaving them to unashamedly proclaim their own virtues to a dwindling audience ever more loudly:

The Curry Corner is the oldest and most highly regarded Bangladeshi restaurant in the country.
Run by the Krori family – the First Family of Indian cuisine.
Deliciously decadent food.
Cooked using only the highest quality local ingredients from the lush countryside.
Freshly ground spices.
In a league of its own.
Seriously stylish interior.
Wildly evocative.
Friendly and personal service.
There are not even enough low grade celebrities to go round  but

The Chatter Challenge
I have created chatter for many brands, products, businesses and personalities.  Celebrity endorsements are a quick route to spark buzz, but there are many means. I will always advise the client that creating the chatter is the easy bit. Sustaining the chatter is more difficult and ultimately returns to the value of the product or person.

When it comes to a restaurant, sooner or later the chatter depends on the diner’s recommendation. Once through the door, they are theirs to make an ally of. Every single diner must be treated to a memorable experience. Once that ethos is established from kitchen to waiting staff, however ordinary the diner, the chatter will look after itself.

I will return to Curry Corner, but I am not excited to and will not be chattering and buzzing about it. And if Jeffrey Archer is quoted singing its praises, I will have a good idea why.

A selection of our latest news and advice is posted below but please do contact us for initial recommendations. That bit is free and we welcome all challenges.“

Matthew Rymer, Managing Director
Linked In | Twitter | Blog

There is a growing need to help vulnerable, desperate horse owners who care passionately about their horses, to find suitable new owners, sharers and loanees who will give their horse a loving and caring home. Our software team is now developing a bespoke online system to marry unwanted horses with appropriate adopters, for our JV client, Hauctions. We have now entered a consultation phase with The British Horse Society and National Equine Welfare Council and other interested parties ahead of a launch in November.

Rebecca Evans, Vice Chairman of The National Equine Welfare Council (NEWC) has joined the Hauctions team to manage this development. Rebecca has worked in the equine welfare charity sector since 1999, previously working as Equine Welfare and Grants Manager at The Horse Trust where she was responsible for managing a multi million pound programme of welfare grants covering cutting edge scientific research, post graduate scholarships, educational literature and a variety of projects to promote responsible ownership and the welfare of the horse.

The objective is to rehome potentially useful & valuable horses, in particular ex-racehorses, to knowledgeable, experienced, suitable homes.  By implementing a professional screening process, unlike any other online system,

All horses are screened as to their potential usefulness and only those which could be potentially useful as companions or rideable horses will be listed.  All applicants are screened and only those which match the requirements of the horse’s needs and owner’s requirements will be put forward for consideration.   Trials, visits and veterinary exams are strongly encouraged as are home checks.  Loan agreements will be generated to suit the requirements of both parties once a suitable new carer has been found.

By providing this service to help rehome horses where value is not an issue but finding the “right home” is crucial, Horses4Homes will help to significantly reduce the number of healthy horses,  unnecessarily slaughtered each year and reduce the burden on equine charities.

From 1750 to 1900, all human knowledge doubled. Did you know it 
now it doubles every 24 months? Did you know every day the average person transmits the information equivalent of six newspapers and receives 174 newspapers of data? That your IQ falls 10 points when you’re fielding constant emails, text messages, and calls? We have collated these and other startling facts to underline the growing threats that connectivity and this vast data movement present to business productivity.

Challenge us to look study your business’ operations and identify how bespoke software solutions could reduce or eliminate these threats.  Ours is a fully turnkey service. An experienced business consultant will visit businesses across the UK, US and Australasia to analyse and recommend solutions to turn threat to advantage. Our team will then develop such solutions to time and budget. Please contact us to arrange a preliminary online discussion. 

Document Loss
Executives waste six weeks per year searching for lost documents.
[From a survey of 2,600 executives by Esselte, maker of Pendaflex and Dymo, FastCompany Magazine, 8/2004]

In surveying 1000 middle managers of large companies in the U.S. and U.K., 59% miss important information almost every day because it exists within the company but they cannot find it.
[Accenture, Wall Street Journal, 5/14/2007]

15% of all paper handled in businesses is lost
[The Delphi Group, a Boston consultancy]
Solution: Document management system

Commuting Cost
Commuting to work takes average 80 hours / year – two weeks holiday
Solution: Remote working systems

Time Wasting
The average worker admits to frittering away 2.09 hours per 8-hour workday, not including lunch and scheduled break-time.
Solution: Time management systems

Information Overload
The world’s capability for storing, communicating and computing information has grown at least 23% annually since 1986. The average person in 2007 was transmitting the information equivalent of six newspapers each day and receiving 174 newspapers of data (much of that reflected in video and photos).
[Dr. Martin Hilbert, Science Magazine, 2/2011]

71% of white-collar workers feel stressed about the amount of information they must process and act on while doing business; 60% feel overwhelmed. 

[Institute of the Future, Menlo Park, CA]
Solution: Project collaboration systems

Data Theft
75% of senior executives in more than 60 countries said they are concerned about data theft and other forms of computer-related reprisals from laid-off employees.
[Ernst & Young, 11/10/2009]
Solution: Online database security audit

Email Waste
Organizations lose around $1,250 per user in annual productivity because of time spent dealing with spam, $1,800 unnecessary emails from co-workers, $2,100 – $4,100 due to poorly written communications.

[Tom Pisello, ITBusinessEdge.com, 12/2008]
Solution: Intranet and helpdesk solutions

Email Litigation
About 24% of companies have had employee emails subpoenaed by a court or regulator, up from 20% two years ago, and 15% have gone to court to defend against lawsuits triggered by an employee email, up from 13%. 
[Wall Street Journal, 7/2006]
Solution: Email monitoring systems

Demands of Recession
The economic downturn is putting pressure on American workers:
–Required to do more work with fewer resources 48%
–Doing the work of two people because of recession, 39%
–Difficulty taking time off from work, 47%
–Feel the need to stay connected,  24/7, 30%

[TNS Research, March 2010, for InterCall]
Solution: Automated processing systems

Electronic Distraction
People who regularly juggle several streams of electronic information do not pay attention, control their memories, or switch from one task to another as well as those who prefer to focus on one thing at a time. Heavy media multitaskers are paying a big price.
[Stanford Report, 8/24/2009, Study by Clifford Nass, Eyal Ophir & Anthony Wagner]

Your IQ falls 10 points when you’re fielding constant emails, text messages, and calls, the same loss you’d experience if you missed an entire night’s sleep and more than double the 4-point loss you’d have after smoking marijuana. On average men fared worse than women because, researchers say, men have more difficulty multitasking.
[
Institute of Psychiatry, London 2005]

Once interrupted, it takes workers 25 minutes to return to the original task, if they return at all. People switch activities, such as making a call, speaking with someone in their cubicle or working on a document, every three minutes on average,
[Betty Lin-Fisher (for Knight Ridder Newspapers), Houston Chronicle, 2/27/2006]

The cost of interruptions to the U.S. economy is estimated at $588 billion a year.
[Jonathan B. Spira, "The Cost of Not Paying Attention," Basex Research, 2005]

62% of at-work email users check work email over the weekend, and 19% check it five or more times in a weekend. More than 50% said they check it on vacation, with the highest amount coming from mobile device users at 78%.

[Erin Gifford, "It's 3am--Are You Checking Email Again?" 
AOL Corporate Newsroom 
Statistic, 45th Annual Email Addiction Survey 2009, AOL]
Solution: Data management systems

Too Many Meetings
45% of senior executives felt that employees would be more productive if meetings were banned once a week.
[Office Team, "Let's Not Meet," 5/7/2009]

Unnecessary meetings cost U.S. businesses approximately $37 billion each year.
[U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2005]
Solution: Remote discussion and information exchange systems

Disorganisation
43% of Americans categorize themselves as disorganized, and 21% have missed vital work deadlines. Nearly half say disorganization causes them to work late at least 2 or times each week.

[Boston Globe 3/12/2006
Esselte survey, David Lewis]
Solution: Time management systems

Paper and Filing
More than 40% of printouts are discarded within 24 hours.
[Daniel Lyons, "The Paper Chasers," Newsweek 12/01/09
Statistics, Xerox Research]

Paper has grown consistently over the last three decades. One of the biggest sources of paper growth really is the Internet. It’s the printing of email.
[
Anne Mulcahy, Xerox CEO, "Paper Trail," Wall Street Journal interview, 3/9/09]
Solution: Online data management and retrieval systems

It all needs to be special! I am bored. Bored, bored, bored of pub restaurants. So are many others. Fact. People are drinking less. Fact. The supermarkets are grabbing the eat out market with their own packages for easy home dining. Fact. There are too many uninspired banal pub restaurants chasing each other’s tails. Belly of pork – one of the cheapest fattest cuts – appears on one pub menu board, now it seems to be on every one. It follows the sausage and the re emergence of prawn cocktail.

I recently ate at The Old Passage at Arlingham, Gloucestershire. Well, really it is nowhere. It sits at the end of a windy seven mile road  from the nearest main road, many miles from any town and away from any tourist region. It was full. Packed with diners, not a seat to spare. Why? Because this humble building had been turned into a destination venue: a seafood restaurant with passion, great culinary skill and a focused hard working front of house. People travel to such places.

My advice to ailing pub restaurants is to stray from the crowd and pull in your own by transforming from being a pit stop to a destination venue. In recession, everyday lazy dining out suffers but people will always save to celebrate and travel for difference. The offering does not have to be exclusive – but the offering of both food and atmosphere needs to be stimulating and DIFFERENT!

It is time pubs created their own style and speciality. Publicans must ask themselves: Would I travel 15 miles to eat here and talk about it afterwards? Otherwise, like Jack of all trades and master of none, they will attract ever diminishing business.

Customised, relevant and up-to-date newsfeeds on a website will improve your search engine ranking and provide a solid connection with your market.  Unique news feeds can also be exploited across other platforms and distribution channels including RSS, email marketing and PR campaigns.

The Benefits of News Feeds
Instant delivery of unique, relevant and topical news feeds will ensure your website is always up-to-date. Those who want to read your articles will keep coming back increasing the number of repeat visitors. Your site will also be seen as the place to go to for news about your industry. With the articles residing on your own website, there will be no need for any more external links to news articles, keeping your hard-won customers on your site.

• Be seen as an ‘authority source’ for your industry
• Important keywords can be included in xml and in the article body copy in order to help identify news pages to the search engines.
• News articles can link to the most profitable internal website pages to aid navigation for readers and to direct web crawlers.
• News can be automatically reformatted for clients, subscribers and readers in the form of an e-newsletter to encourage traffic back to your site.
• News pages are dynamic, which helps search engines regard the site as current.

Levels of service

Research and copywriting For Unique & Frequent Content
We will plan, direct and commission relevant freelancers to prepare unique articles for your site, relevant to your strategic objectives and your specific audience.  Articles are not duplicated in the same form across the World Wide Web, which is important to search engines seeking high quality content.

You, as the client, will have full control over the types of stories written. You can change the brief at anytime and we will ensure that all news feeds will conform to and change with your SEO strategies.

Alternatively, a less expensive system is to publish RSS feeds from news sites.

Publishing
We will develop a system to add a separate static page to your site to encourage search engines to explore and crawl a website more frequently (including important keywords in the news url to help identify the page). Articles can be archived to encourage further crawling of the site, and to provide an invaluable online knowledge resource to site users.

Processing Engine
We can help locate a suitable tailored or RSS feed and develop a processing engine module within your administration console, allowing the site administrator to:

- View all stories
- Search / sort
- Edit / delete / publish/ unpublish
- View how many feeds were received and stories imported
- Persent stats on a realtime chart on the console dashboard

We can also develop dynamic front end photo and video galleries. We can time the delivery of the feed to suit your needs, for example when viewing figures are high or when readers log on in the morning.

Interested?
Please contact us for further information and a range of choices.

So, I proceeded to order 24 preserving jars and 50 odd  jars off the internet, and to shop for stocks of sugar, vinegar, salt, a myriad of spices, a jam pan, a sterilisation pack…. I don’t drink but I have noticed there is a huge sloe crop on the way so I have ordered pretty bottles for sloe gin too. I am having two new shelves installed in my kitchen to store and display. I  have spent hours crying over split onions and the various tasks now hover over what should be carefree evenings.

None of this would have been necessary had I allowed myself to continue to buy in to the very reason we have supermarkets - convenience, choice and cost! We deceive ourselves, but the simple truth of self sufficiency is that it is a luxury heavy on wallet, environment and time, shrinking our choices as we then battle the burden of our glut. This evening, up and down the country there will be kids desperate never to see another runner bean, or smell another of Dad’s boiling beetroot.

However, at least this Christmas, with some pretty labelling, I will have off the shelf presents, each sealed with a little soul and heartache. This will be cost effective and convenient.

Not an outlet available to those who try to be too self sufficient with their marketing.

Scruffy said nothing as I laboured the shortest route over the hillside, printing my trail through clean carpets of midfield snow. His hind legs dangling to my right and forelegs left, he hung limp and helpless in my care.

I talked and talked at him words of encouragement, marveling at his tail and fine teeth. I was so scared he would not survive, although to my relief his left hind appeared bloody and knawed but was no longer bleeding and his eyes were still bright.

His head was narrow to nose and his canines gleamed. They were teeth engineered to kill and tear but I felt no threat. His coat was a rich snow speckled rust red, silvering towards his lower back. I wondered how old he was, having now confirmed my Mr Reynard assumption he was a He.

His tail, or should I say brush, was beautiful. Much the same colour as his back and flanks but with a grey underside and a white tip. I gauged its occasional movement from droop to quarter stiff as signal surviving spirit.

He rarely looked at me as I spoke to him and we made no attempt to eyetalk. I was so determined to get him to warmth and food and he was, after all, critically ill. Or so I thought.

I assumed his occasional release of urine was down to his illness. Every 20 yards there would be a warm dribble on my right forearm and I found myself coming to predict the next as a means of distraction and I admit I found this a little curious. Slowing or accelerated made no difference – the frequency was always related to distance.

I have a vague memory of the Buzzard shadowing us because I recollect being relieved I had saved the fox from becoming the raptor’s snow feast. Of course, I do remember the rabbits. It was an obvious oddity to me that I had not seen one rabbit on my outward journey and yet I counted a total of six staring at us from white hedgelines on my return. I did notice Scruffy’s eyes logging each one too. Again, as towards the Buzzard, I assumed the worst of reasons, that they were tormenting dear Scruffs.

It was a surreal journey back and I do know I felt then I was being watched. But I was a conspicuously lone figure dissecting vast snow carpets and carrying a fox so thought no more of it.

As I finally descended and the the back of the farm came into view I became more alert to any human eyes. I crept the last few yards and crawled through to the secret cottage.

I put him down with massive relief more than care and unlatched the front door before taking him into our refuge. The staircase was now little more substantial than caked woodworm dust and one reason my brothers and I were forbidden to ever enter the abandoned cottage. This, of course, made it the safest refuge from ruthless insensitive adults. Feeling exceptionally naughty, I carried him ever so carefully step by step and deposited him on the old straw mattress sitting on the rusted iron bedstead. He lay there still but panting a little. Telling him I was the one that should be panting, I said I would be back in ten and I headed for the house to steal a blanket.

Oh Dear! My Mother was hoovering! This was always a sure sign she was in a bad mood. Like the eyes of the TV news presenter that chase you around the room, so she did with the hoover. Feet and people were keen targets once in her stride.

“Bloody hayseeds! Do we really live in a barn!” I heard her shouting over the hoover, whose full throttle was no match for Mum in hers. Then, seeing me through the pantry returning myself to blood warmth on the Aga rail, she turned her attention to me: “Matth…hew. You are dripping snow all over the kitchen. Look. Just look. You know, it takes a moment to take your wellies and coat off. What do you think a porch is for? Umm? Umm? And why aren’t you wearing your scarf?”

I decided to leave smartly via the larder and instead steal the blanket keeping the chest warm on the Dexter tractor. No one would notice – Grandpa only kept the tractor for turning hay in the summer with the Acrobat at breakneck speed.

What a stately sight he was. My Fox, lying on a wrought iron bed, his body matching the rusting brass rod finials on the four corner uprights. “King Fox!” I exclaimed, smiling with some relief he was safely ensconced in my frontline hospital. I decided the mice living in the mattress and the many spiders cobwebbing the room corners made it all the more hospitable for my Master Fox.

I opened a tin of Tuffet’s (our Labrador’s) Obesity Dog Food for Him and then darted into the cattle yard to scoop up tank water through the broken ice with a dented bed pan I found in the cottage gloom.

I put the diesel spoiled blanket over Scruffy’s body, resting his head on a folded hessian sack. Now retired ambulance driver, I turned nurse and doctor again. I wanted to chat to my new friend, learn more about him and make him better.

I used to take in sackfuls of dead lambs (stillborns) for dissection too, much to Mr Bright’s delight. Pretty frozen on boarding the school bus, the afterbirth had a habit of beginning to de thaw before reaching school and oozing towards the screams of the Junior Convent Girls. Perhaps a 12 year old taking a sack of dead lambs to school is strange too, although it never felt so at the time.

I was mulling over whether the mice had a better life indoors than in the cold when I remembered I was cold. Cold…SNOW! It had started heavily snowing yesterday afternoon!  I flung myself out of the duvet and over to my window just as the Grandfather clock gracefully warned the house it was half past the sixth hour.

Dreamscape white. I gasped that childish euphoria… the moment when you realize there will be no school today! For me, that meant a day on the farm, a day in the snow!

I entered the kitchen with Father in mid conversation with Grandpa. He lived at our other farm two miles away and though in his seventies he had left his Volvo in the warmth of his hay barn and sneaked across the snow to help plot its defeat at the earliest hour. Wearing his trilby and grey overcoat tied up in twine, he stood outside talking through the kitchen window, preferring to blast the kitchen with shocking cold than suffer a fleeting tease of warmth.

Looking back now, perhaps his determination to catch Father eating his breakfast through the window was a generational taunt each hands down: the implication you have never had it so good (even if ‘so good’ is sitting in a  kitchen at 7am being blasted with cold and told what needs doing).

Where’s the pick, John? I had better start on the field tanks. You did lag the pipes into Cow Pasture and Top Field? I did mention it.”

“Yes, I think Clive did. I was up until one lambing. Lost three, four twins,” Father replied (perhaps with his own implication), as he rested his streaky bacon into a pan of sizzling lard; “It should be next to the Perry Loader”.

“Do you think you will be able to get the straw across? Mind you, bedding will be bloody frozen…”

Their conversation continued, completely oblivious to my entry. You learnt very young on a farm that farming is more important than anything else, including family. Or, perhaps a more reasonable statement would be that the farm is a such a large family of animals that one little boy is quite proportionate and of all the creatures possibly the most able to look after their self.

I was anxious to embrace the day and I so I devoured a couple of shredded wheat but donated my toast to the bird table, running back indoors with a semi frozen hand after shovelling its thick layer of snow.

I left Dad to a few moments of closed window peace and bounded upstairs to prepare.

I paused to pull my curtains fully back and marvel at the sparkling certainty of this view. My window was my eye to the floodplains, the combine fields, glints of Severn, orchards, woods, copses and beyond to Gloucester’s Cathedral tower to the right and a distant smudge that was Cheltenham towards my left, shadowed by the Cotswold escarpment stretching behind. My window lit my day with its clues and I would absorb its intelligence quite carefully every morning. Today it was blind white clueless.

I decided to head out for a wildlife expedition first. I grabbed my canvas shoulder bag, popped in my notebook and pencil, threw the binoculars over me on top of a scarf and ventured out.

Virgin snow rolled perfect smooth the landscape, pipeworked by submerged hedgelines and interspersed with basket weaved sugar snap trees. No greys below the leaden sky, pure white with the merest blemish of black undershadows to enhance.

I was hopeful I might be able to track badgers, foxes and rabbits. The snow exposes the warm blooded and I was excited what I might log. As I trekked up the hill, heading towards the river the yonder side, I had already counted considerable flocks of Fieldfares and Redwings, and passed 15 Long Tailed Tits pinking and bobbing themselves warm.

Why do kids love snow so much? Is it because it turns upside down all normality? It is a seasonal condition that never fails to freeze progress to halt and overpower all things adult. I remember my brother, Philip, making snow sandwiches as a kid, he was so convinced snow held all the answers!

I loved, and still do, the deafening silence of snow country. All I could now hear were the distant whistling of Wigeon that will have moved to the flowing River waters, the crunch of snow below me and the muffled bellows from our cattle yearning their hay breakfast in the yards I had left behind me.

A bitter easterly was brewing and I put on pace. Even from the brow I could hear not a murmur from the lanes, the soft yellow flecks of distant window lights signaling commuters trapped in silence. I was on an adventure in my own world!

I tested the snow depths, keen to report back, persuading myself I was on a mission of family duty. Feet sinking – must be four foot there!

On reaching the bottom of Bramble hill, I took along the Wainlodes Road as its first ever explorer. The snow was heavy here and I slowed to an Arctic explorer’s foot sinking plod.

It was then I noticed several small red stains in the snow just ahead of me. Immediately stirred I was onto a tracking, I was alert to more. They speckled the snow alongside the hedgeline for some ten yards before the trail stopped.

Wisely avoiding a mini avalanche I declined the hedge’s invitation and instead took a circuitous route over a freezing five bar gate further down. Now backtracking along the other side, I soon saw the cause of the blood.

There was a fox, placid eyes in empty stare at me, slumped dead. Or so I thought.

I loved skinning animals – don’t ask why. Is this strange too? Boys are are manic collectors and my leaning was animals, albeit including outsides, insides and parts of. I was ridiculously euphoric. I had come across dead badgers, hedeghogs, swans, a mole and many other species more but never a fox. I had come to rather assume the Cotswold Vale Hunt got them first. I had already decided I would wear its brush, skin its coat and put its head in a water tank for a few months so I could add the skull to my collection.

But, as I leant over it, it twitched. I Jumped. ‘IT’S ALIVE.’

My reaction switched as opposite as dead is to alive, and I dropped to my knees. “Hey You” I soothed. It tried to move but couldn’t more than twitch. Its rear hind dragged aimlessly on blood soaked snow, its mouth ajar, tongue lolling, body passive.

I held a fascination and respect for the mysterious and cunning Mr Fox and here was one crying for help. I simply had no idea what to do. If I took him home Dad would have him shot.

His eyes were so delicate, he was so wounded, so helpless, a white whiskered, fallen hero with ears bent low. I knew his life was shrinking fast in the bitter cold. I already felt the freeze, knelt still in the snow. ‘What do I do?’ I asked myself, the snow silence stranding my thoughts lonely.

I  whipped scarf off and curled it round his neck – silly thing to do I know but I knew not what else to do.

I looked him in the eyes…. they were pleading and I felt all his pain in my helplessness. I could not falter my gaze, I felt a union, a sympathy, a connection, a sharing. This sixth sense felt familiar. Something in me told me to keep quiet and I did, but he did not stir. I continued gazing into his soft almost puppy like eyes, shivering away my own cold.

And then.. he talked. He talked!!

‘I am dying. Kill me now, get it over with. I had lived well, had sired six cubs, run your hunt ragged and now is time. End my pain please, I beg you.’

“Eyetalk!” I shouted. ‘Oh my word!” Smiling broadly, all uncertainty blown east, I shook my head with both the care of the nurse who loves and the doctor who know better.

With all the determination of my soul but absolutely no idea how, I replied into his eyes: “You are not going to die Scruffy. No way.”

I felt like a young girl who plonks her dolls in a pram and rides out all those confused maternal instincts. I had my baby now and he was my sole objective in life.

This was how I met Scruffy. If he had not met me he would have died. If I had not met him, the human race would have.