I must confess to not being very up on varieties of cereal but I now know that what’s growing all around the base of my bird table is oats. Aren’t they beautiful, delicate seed heads?

A bit of me thinks – go on, be a cereal killer and pull them up…then another bit of me thinks about their wonderful tenacity and will to live and I’m not sure I can do it. I mean really, kill cereals? Why would you? They are, after all, one of the most perfect examples of how humans came to be able to settle down and move away from hunting and gathering to lead more settled lives. This in turn led to the development of big tools that would have been impossible to cart around if you didn’t have a home in which to store them. Oats in particular are suited to cool, wet climates and can even be grown in Iceland!

They are wonderful things that help to lower cholesterol and provide food for millions of humans and animals. Myself, I’m very partial to porridge and oat bread – well, there is (possibly was) a wonderful bakery in Headington in Oxford that made the most extraordinary oat bread. It’s twenty odd years since I last sampled it and would give anything to be close enough to do so again. Who would be a cereal killer now eh?