Columnist ‘Alpha of the Plough’ recalled a dinner conversation in which a lady had admitted that she rarely visited her home in the Sussex countryside because of the depressing call of a certain night-time owl. The journalist observed that even London had owls, but this owl seemed especially to oppress her, so soon after the Great War.

By contrast, ‘Alpha of the Plough’ relished the dark forebodings of his own local owl, for they always stung him into optimism, and made him think that the impossible might be possible after all. He longed to tell his owl about another neighbour, a robin redbreast who rose with the sun and put an entirely different complexion on the matter.

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