The Unofficial Country- side, by Richard Mabey (Pimlico, £10.99 in UK)
"By rights they should not be there. They seem, to the conditioned urban eye, as insignificant and maybe as annoying as a splash of spilt green paint." If you're prepared to open those conditioned urban eyes and look around you, of course, you'll discover not just the tiny plants on the pavement to which Richard Mabey refers in the passage above, but all sorts of magical signs of wildlife, whether on dusty concrete, grotty waste ground or a dullas-ditchwater dual carriageway. Mabey knows his swifts from his starlings - "Round Trafalgar Square," he writes of the latter, "their dusk flights are so spectacular, as they mount up suddenly from their roosts and fold like a black cloak around the tops of the buildings, that they have more than once nearly had me run over." He may be writing about London, but he'll give you a new perspective on your own mean streets, wherever they are.
