Watching a water rat, remembering reading Wind in the Willows 

One of the books I loved to read as a boy was Wind in the Willows - my book had a green hard back cover - the text was interpersed with wonderful illustrations by Ernest H Shepard - the witty and delicate drawings tugged at my heart strings -  they showed me a water rat in a Norfolk jacket, or sporting flannel trousers - a mole in a dark jacket - a badger in down at heel slippers, wearing a long dressing gown, with its cord trailing behind him -

I was entranced, too, by the depictions of interiors - the louche disorder of the badger's study - the water rat's parlour, with its neat little fireplace and armchairs - most of all, I would gaze at the drawing showing the mole's fore-court, with its wire baskets of ferns, the bust of Garibaldi, skittle alley and goldfish pond -

I savoured each chapter of the book - I was especially taken with the easy excuses and explanations of the  extravagant Toad - I would grin, recognizing something in myself, when Toad refused to apologize to his friends for scandalizing the river bank - Oh yes, yes, in there - I'd have said anything in there -

I thought of this wonderful book a number of times this year - the valley has been subject to seasonal floods - the water meadows have been turned into lakes - the river has burst its banks - 

Just down the lane, I looked down, on a whim, into a flooded field - I saw there, swimming bravely in the swirling brown water, a water rat - I could see his bright clever eye - his long tail slightly curved with the flow of the flood water - he swam through the flooded field, insouciant and self contained - 

I thought then of Ratty - of the amusement and happiness I had felt reading of his adventures - I remembered how he scribbled poetry, and how he'd dreamed of travelling to the south, to the warm Mediterranean - 

I wished then, and I still do now, that he hadn't listened to the gentle Mole - that he'd followed his heart, at least for once -