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The fox lay in the long grass, breathing shallowly, no mark on her body but pits around her in the soil where she had thrashed out with her strong claws. The end was nigh; she gazed calmly at me and made no effort to escape. A braver man than I would have found a big rock, but I and the dog, strangely quiet, walked on by. Half an hour later I went back and she was dead. Two hours later and the corpse had been recycled by something, somewhere.

A fox is unusual, but rarely a day goes by without the mangled remains of a rabbit or a pheasant. Death is ever present here.

In fact, when we had cats death was even more present. The compost heap became a charnel house. I can still hear the screams of my partner one morning when she slid her bare feet into her shoes and thereby discovered the rotting innards left thoughtfully there by one of the cats. Probably Webster, a big black bruiser who I watched nervously every spring, fearful that one day he would try and wrestle a neighbour’s lamb through the catflap. When next door’s children proudly showed me their new pet rabbit, Fluffles or some such thing, my first reaction was to look around for Webster, who was lounging over-casually nearby in the manner of Harry Lime in The Third Man.

Death’s part of life, as it were, and in the countryside you’re close to it. Many of us who clip a rabbit driving in the lanes will perform a sort of macabre soft-tyre shuffle with the car, revving backwards and forwards until the bunny is mercifully despatched.

If you have cats, nature’s larder saves you money – our late pair rarely bothered with cat food and in the end we stopped buying it. We don’t have cats now – not because we’re squeamish, but because we became fed up with sharing our living space with squashy, smelly, dead bits.

We see death every day. Death as a neighbour is one of the three Pillars of Trepidation to which all visitors from more populous places refer when they come to stay: a), the unremarked proximity of dead things stands alongside b), unsettling quietness and c), scary, street-light-less darkness at night.

Maybe it’s because so many articles and programmes about this country, as opposed to wildlife documentaries about far-flung places, skirt the issue. Bill Oddie is rarely seen dripping with blood. Country File has many long, lingering shots, but few of them are of corpses.

I think it’s healthy, this awareness of the big D. And I wonder if lack of this awareness contributes to so much misunderstanding of the real countryside.

At the height of the hunting debate, I wondered just how much of the anger was fuelled by upset at the thought of Brother Reynard being heartlessly prevented from ending his days in a cosy armchair by the fire, surrounded by his adoring grandchildren.  Live here and you are aware that a fox’s end is in starvation, disease or violence. Doesn’t make hunting right, necessarily, but it is a fact.

Moving on: from my former trade, newspaper journalism, there’s sad news from Devon, where the Torbay Herald Express is to convert from a daily newspaper to a weekly title with consequent job losses. It shows such disrespect for an area’s affairs, its history, its culture, its organisations, even its democracy, a continuation of the long, painful decline of newspapers. Or some newspapers.

The doom-sayers would tell you it’s a decision taken because newspapers are done and dusted. I’d say newspapers are done and dusted because they’re run by people who think they’re done and dusted, and hand in hand with every decline in investment in standards has gone falling circulation in a self-fulfilling prophecy that leaves communities without their printed inky heart.

And there’s a consequent rise in concerns about people’s lack of involvement in their community, particularly local democracy – if nobody’s interested enough to report, or debate, why should anybody be interested enough to vote? No wonder Parliament has discussed whether there should be state support for local media so its important role in our culture and society can be maintained.

Not every newspaper owner believes in decline and despair. I don’t have much in common with Rupert Murdoch, but I do agree with this statement of his (not a phrase I ever thought I’d type): “Newspapers will reach new heights. In the 21st century, people are hungrier for information than ever before. And they have more sources of information than ever before. Amid these many diverse and competing voices, readers want what they’ve always wanted: a source they can trust. That has always been the role of great newspapers in the past. And that role will make newspapers great in the future.”

Moving on again… As ever, thanks for the calls, e-mails and comments – I’m particularly enjoying hearing from old readers now living far away but reunited thanks to the miracle of modern thingummibob.

In the newspaper days this column was uploaded somewhat haphazardly, but now people can at least rely on it to be there each Monday morning, some time after the second cup of coffee of the day. Famous last words…

And finally – are the strikes planned later this month going to be the biggest since 1926 simply because it’s taken the trade unions that long to get themselves organised?