Hobbits and Charlies.

I’ve been doing the rounds of the Shire today, even stopping for extended chats with a couple of fellow hobbits.

First up was farmer Sillitoe Snr who was coming down the lane on his 1966 vintage tractor.

‘Just taking it for a wash,’ he said. ‘The water pressure’s better down the bottom than it is up at my place. We’ve got a tractor run tomorrow.’

I asked him where the bulls had gone from the fields at the back and sides of my house. He hesitated briefly, and then said with more than a hint of rueful tone:

‘Ah, they’ve gone now. They were a nice bunch, you know.’

And then I saw about as much of a hint of emotion as you’re ever likely to see betrayed on the visage of an elderly farmer. He continued:

‘I hate it, you know. Hate it! I love my animals. It wasn’t so bad when I had the milkers; at least they’d had a life when it was time to go. These lads are in their prime. Hate it!’

And then he talked about the serious illness he’d had some years ago, and about his wife’s death in a car crash just a little way from home. His daughter was driving, and ran into a hay wagon when she was temporarily blinded by the sun sitting above the Weaver Hills. It was July. He put that aside and told me I should go and meet the Charlies in his top field.

‘They’re Charolais, really, but I like to call them Charlies.’

I headed off to meet the Charlies, but who should I encounter leaning on his gate watching the world go by, but farmer Sillitoe’s younger son, David. We talked at length about the meaning of life and the methods of living it. He said the reason he liked talking to me was that I was so open minded. (Ha! Not always, I’m not.) He talked about his mother, too, telling me about the near death experience she’d had a few years before her eventual demise in the car crash. I began to feel that there was something a bit special about Mrs Sillitoe. I wish I’d known her.

When I did eventually reach the field in which the Charlies were ensconced, they paid me scant attention. A couple of them seemed mildly curious, but mostly they just wanted to graze. Next time, maybe.

And finally, while I was talking to Stan the Elder on his elderly tractor, a portion of the Mill Lane family came walking past. There was mother, sister R, the pony and his passenger – a little girl of unknown genesis, but whose eyes suggested she was family of the Mill Lane clan. We exchanged greetings, and sister R even resumed her customary habit of smiling nicely, a trait that was noticeably absent the last time I saw her.