Up at 0700 today for my constitutional bicycle ride; it gets easier and becomes more routine with every day – sweats, helmet, gloves, water, hi-viz belt, key, door, bike, go – although today I was also equipped with carrots to tempt the local horse population into wickedness, or at very lease huffing at me happily.

The grass is frosty and wet, and I cycled up the path, away from the village, past my favourite cherry trees – alas, slightly bitten by frost, but not badly – and down the lane past the abandoned church; the horses near Taplin’s field started-off a bit reticent, but sight of free root vegetables soon excited them into plodding over to the fence.

Over the motorway – watch the cars go whooshing by – and under the railway bridge – hear the carriages go whirr-clank-whirr, and the bubbling of the veritable brook that flows in the drainage ditch.

The fields around my area are often wet with standing water, and sometimes flooded, and so emerging silently from the shadow of the bridge perhaps I should have been less surprised to see a dog-fox in the adjacent field, squaring-off against a heron; I understand that literary tradition demands that herons should be described like schoolmasters – intelligent, hooded, lanky, and all angles – but this one was more like a sulky teenage goth whose best blacks have been put through a bleach-wash by his mum.

The heron was having none of the fox.

I managed to coast for a few seconds before they even noticed me; the fox caved (cave vulpum?) and retreated to a safe distance, and the heron looked at me, shrugged, and lazily flapped off.

Into Winchfield Hurst and on a whim turn left to Elvetham (Note to self: i really must find out if we have a local Eel population) – bear left again, and along a quiet little country lane only to encounter a marvellous little humpbacked bridge over a sizeable stream.

So I did what any good British schoolboy would do: I stopped for a game of poohsticks [www.crypticide.com] – long won in 10 seconds, by a length over short.

Past the motocross track, past the two WWII-era pillboxes (my area contains many fortifications from that era, built on the assumption of invasion on the south coast ploughing straight through en-route for London) – and past the only semi-explicable empty Durex wrapper in the hedgerow. Past the spindly kids in their flares, walking to school, along a stint of A-road in heavy traffic, back up to the church, and I’m home.

It’s a nice start to a day.