Country diary: a predatory fish out of water

Sandy, Bedfordshire: There was something terrible about this pike, so strong and adept in open air, breaking loose from its watery domain to display a row of jagged teeth

The inflatable banana caught my eye again, drawing my attention from a stretch of riverside towpath that had been mined and undermined by rabbits, tunnelled by moles and pummelled into unevenness by the hooves of the Travellers' horses that were long before left loose to run here.

It was on that same walk the day before that I'd first seen the metre-long, primrose-yellow plastic banana lodged in bankside vegetation, as clean and bright as the moment it had been laughed down a weir or launched on the water to see how fast this bent canoe would go. Did they wonder if their joke would carry to the sea, the open ocean? Did they think the river a sink that would wash it down the plug hole? Had they even heard of microplastics?