Portions for foxes

Nice article in The Guardian this week on urban foxes, written by Blake Morrison, in which he describes a recent South London scene: 'a few weeks ago there was one in the car park next to our local post office. It was playing with an apple and let it roll down the sloping grass mound and drop over the car park wall, before leaping down to catch it - and then returning to the top of the slope to begin again. I watched for 10 minutes. A driver in the van parked next to me was watching too, and we turned to shrug and smile at each other. Here we were, in a crowded city in the middle of the day, watching a fox play catch with an apple. It was magic. But then foxes have always been magic, wherever they are'.

When I lived outside of London I used to be a hunt saboteur, but I hardly ever saw any foxes - now I see them all the time. The best time for encountering foxes round here is in the early hours when they own the streets of South London. For some time I had a fox sleeping on a lean-to right outside the window at the back of where we live, but my favourite sighting was when I was working on Camberwell Road. There was a derelict piece of land, now built on, opposite the Clubland building where my office was. From my window I could see over the fence surrounding the site and regularly watch a fox and a couple of cats chilling out on a sofa on the site, like something out of a Disney movie.

Blake Morrison's article by the way was part of plugging his new novel South of the River which looks like it should be of intersest to transpontine enthusiasts. Morrison teaches at Goldsmiths in New Cross but I'm not sure where he lives.

Cute Urban Fox image from Urban Fox Press -check them out.