We have a garden shed. It has eight on sides, six of which are glazed. We love it as an escape place, almost as a second-home-in-the-country, like the owners of such who are now using theirs to escape the coronavirus plague.
In this garden retreat of ours, other than in the cold weather, we eat, drink, write and listen to the radio. From it we look out onto a small, walled, London garden, its arbour of vines, flowers, trees in pots - and our pets.
Having no dog as an excuse to go out, we have chosen self-imposed isolation, as is recommended for old and vulnerable people during the period when the dreaded virus is rife. And because we have no tame pets to exercise, we take extra pleasure in our wild ones - animals that look after themselves (with a little help from us).
Our garden robin shares our shed where it eats grated cheese, goldfinches guzzle niger seeds from two feeders, a pair of great tits nest in a box each year, wrens, blue tits, blackbirds and wood pigeons visit and, nest nearby. I rather miss meeting the fox on my way to get the paper at 7 am, now that I am not allowed out.
But we do have one unusual pet. One day, I heard squeals from across the road where a dentist friend found a toad on his doorstep. I put this creature in our garden, intending to ask around if anyone with more space and a pond would take it. But it disappeared.
A year later, as we sat in our shed during a downpour, what should appear but our pet toad. It marched across the garden over wet flagstones. Then it disappeared until the following year, appearing once again in a rainstorm. And we saw it again the year after that.
It lives somewhere among the loose bricks and cascade of flowerpots, eating, presumably, slugs, worms and snails.
It is a useful pet, and happily oblivious of the goings-on around it that are peculiar to the human race.
It could even outlive us.
