Toads do not mind potholes

Saturday 21st Mar 2026

‘I don’t know what my daughter will think,’ she says. I am shivering in the fish queue again. For just one hour, one day a week, you can buy fresh fish. Such a treat for us being so far from the coast. I am second from the back. The queue stays about the same size. Too long and I would not want to wait that time, too short and it would not catch your eye. The fishmonger is an expert at regulating the line of people, chatting for a long time or a short time to create an interest. ‘Where is your daughter?’ I ask.

“She is in Australia, but is coming home tomorrow, what on earth will think of our weather?”

The only thing that takes up as much time as weather in our conversation is potholes. But I am at the front now paying my money and I have run out of time.

We seem to have also run out of time and money for our food recycling bins. My sister in Yorkshire has a little food bin that she puts out for regular Council collection. I am trying to remember what we did with waste food when I was young. The truth is that I do not remember any waste food left on our plates. We only ate at our meals three times a day and we ate everything on our plates. The only thing I did not eat was rice pudding. However, it was always served out to me and I sat there with it in front of me. Nothing else was offered to me and my father ate it in the end.

Soon we will have our own food waste bins and the Council will be able collect it and convert it into fertilizer or perhaps gas for heating.

There is no waste here from the bird food we put out. The small birds eat the variety of seeds and any they do not like are tossed to the ground. The robin and wren along with the hedge sparrows are waiting there to devour any discarded food. One of the birds we are seeing a lot of is the siskin. We have quite a flock. At first you would think that it is just any old little brown bird, but when I look closely especially through binoculars, I can see that it is surprisingly streaked bright yellow almost like a canary.

There is a council notice of road closure here. It is not closed for pothole repair it is closed so that toads can cross safely. Toads do not worry about potholes, they even like them if they are full of water for splashing about.

 (Taken from my column in The Star)