I was with great sadness that I read that Phil Gates’s country diary piece was to be his last (Country diary: A lesson from my final diary after nearly 40 years – keep looking closely, 19 September). It has become my habit to check the column as soon as I get my hands on the paper to see if it was a “Phil Gates diary day”, then to savour it.
This is partly, perhaps, because his diaries are from my own county, but mainly because I have never failed to learn something new and interesting about some overlooked or unspectacular species in the natural world, despite this being my subject.
The information in his column would usually find its way into my teaching. I well remember my class of 10-year-olds calculating and measuring their jumps after learning from Phil’s piece that a springtail can use its furcula to jump many times its own body length.
Jim McManners
Trimdon Grange, County Durham
I do not know anything about Phil Gates, but I must have read and enjoyed countless country diaries by him over the years. These became especially important during a long period of being unable to get outside independently or walk at all. Country diary became my news from the world outside – not news about the never-ending machinations of humankind but of the world I really missed: the sights, sounds and backstories of the wild flower and the calling bird.
Now that I am taking my first slow steps into local woods, I intend to follow the Phil Gates method and marvel at what I can find at my feet. There is indeed much marvelling there to carry me on into my 70s as I get back on my feet. Thank you, Phil Gates, whoever you are.
Ann MacAskill
Sheffield
