Tales of the Country: My off-road jaunt drives readers mad

A letter arrived earlier this week from a reader, criticising the way I live my life. When you write 1,000 or so weekly words about your lifestyle in a national newspaper, you are fair game, of course. All the same, it always comes as a slight surprise to find that people are sufficiently irritated by this or that to commit ink (sometimes green) to paper. But then countryside issues, as I have learnt in the 10 months since moving to Herefordshire, are incredibly emotive.

My epistolary critic this week did not use green ink or, similarly sure evidence of an unsteady mind, block capitals. The letter is perfectly reasonable in tone and he gives both his name and address, which is always a relief; the anonymous ones are so spineless. Anyway, this man's name is Ronald Eyre, whether the television and theatre director of that name I don't know. If it is the chap who directed The Secret Policeman's Other Ball, then he is something of a hero, which makes the criticism hard to take.

Whatever, Mr Eyre was "a bit horrified" by my recent account of an afternoon's green-laning – the practice of driving Land Rovers along ancient country thoroughfares, helping, say the green-laners, to keep them from becoming impenetrable. He also lambasts me, albeit politely, for killing mice and removing a jackdaw's nest from a chimney. "'Live and let live' was once the countryman's motto," he writes. "You can't call yourself countrified yet."

Funnily enough, I had a vivid dream the other night in which I led a herd of cattle through the beer garden of a remote country pub. They say that you are truly bilingual when you start to dream in another language, so on the same basis, I woke up thinking myself fully countrified. But Mr Eyre is probably right.

I would, however, like to tackle his criticisms one by one. I had hoped, actually, to convey some sense of ambivalence towards green-laning, but judging by the number of angry letters that my column provoked, one of which was published in The Independent, I failed.

I went green-laning at the invitation of a friend, mainly because I thought it would give me something to write about, in which regard it was a roaring success. Chris, my friend's friend, whose vehicle we travelled in, and who is to green-laning what Calvin was to Calvinism, eloquently bent my ear on why green-laning is misunderstood... and when it's at 45 degrees in a confined space half-way up a Welsh mountain, an ear is easily bent.

I accept Chris's devoutly-held conviction that green-laners are not, on the whole, the environmental Goths and Vandals they are made out to be. On the other hand, I can understand why someone living next to a tranquil thicket would not want to see or hear a growling Land Rover Discovery emerging from it. And as I have no desire to be trapped between an immovable object and an irresistible force, I probably won't be going green-laning again.

As for the mice, Mr Eyre suggests blocking their holes instead of killing them, evoking images of Tom and Jerry-style arches in skirting-boards. The truth, as our local pest control guru Maurice O'Grady tells us, is that if you can fit a ballpoint pen through a hole, a mouse can get through it, too. And when we put down humane traps, releasing the caught mice well away from the house, they scuttled straight back. So I'm afraid that we had to come over all Clint Eastwood with them, and we dealt with the jackdaws' nest in the same ruthless manner – hopefully before they had time to start raising a family of lovely little jackdaws – because, as callous as it sounds, we wanted to light a fire without being smoked half to death.

In fact, it occurs to me, Mr Eyre, that while I am certainly not countrified yet, I might actually be more countrified than you. Folk in the country who waste time blocking mouseholes, and do without warmth rather than disturb jackdaws' nests, probably come from the town.

A growing love affair with a vegetable patch

Our runner beans are up and indeed running, a source of almost more excitement than I can take. In London, we had a 30ft garden, into which we somehow squeezed flowers, shrubs, herbs, bikes, a barbecue, a table and chairs, a rabbit hutch, a sandpit, a treehouse (a great achievement, that, as there was no tree) and a shed. But we never got round to growing veg, and although not a man known for his quality of topsoil, I have always fancied being able to pull a bunch of carrots from my own vegetable patch.

Here, we've been able to give the vegetables rather more than a patch; we have a 60ft bed full of embryonic beans, onions, garlic, carrots, broccoli, lettuce and beetroot. We are also composting like billyo, a process to which Zoe the miniature Shetland pony is making an invaluable, and not so miniature, contribution. I wouldn't say the vegetables are beginning to occupy my every waking thought, exactly, but on being invited to spend last Friday night in a swish hotel in France I did reflect – not quite ruefully, yet with a degree of rue that surprised me – that it would mean missing Gardener's World on the radio.

If only geography was always this much fun

Let me return once more to the subject of Lord Hereford's Knob. Our new friend Rosemary was greatly tickled by my item about innuendo-laden topographical features of the Welsh Marches, and went on to discuss the matter at a party a few weeks later. "Actually, Rosemary," said a male friend of hers, "I've been on Lord Hereford's Knob." Cue much chuckling, apparently, which turned to rampant hysteria when Rosemary responded, "But you've never been up Myarth."