Walks, Woods and Sundry Things.

Having done one of the tougher trimming jobs in the garden this afternoon, I decided – unusually given the nature of my diurnal routines – to go for an evening walk, first to the Harry Potter wood to pay my respects to the little people, and then to the smaller wood at the top of the lane where I could talk to the sheep in the adjoining field.

I stood leaning on the field gate in the cool, damp air (we had a couple of hours of welcome and persistent rain this afternoon; it started just as I was finishing the tough trimming job), musing on the state of life and mine in particular, and realised three things:

1. Conversations tend to be a bit one-sided when little people and sheep are all you have to talk to.

2. The ‘feel’ of the landscape changes noticeably as the day progresses. I usually see my local landscape around lunchtime, but sometimes I need the excitement of variety.

3. The perception of how light relates to the passage of the seasons must be different for woodland dwellers than it is for the rest of us. We think of summer as the light time and winter the dark, but woods are different. They’re at their lightest during the winter when the trees are bare, and then become delightfully dappled when the leaves begin to form in the spring, and then grow much darker when the canopy is fully formed. I decided this must indicate something very profound about the state of being, but I couldn’t think what it was.

*  *  *

A swallow has finally arrived in Mill Lane. Just one. This is a strange state of affairs since the whole purpose of making the 5,000-mile trip from South Africa is to breed, and even swallows can’t breed on their own. I wondered whether it was an ageing male which had been stood up in favour of a younger bird, and sympathised. I’ve been there.

*  *  *

It occurs to me that if I go through life with my tongue stuck firmly in my cheek, it might one day decline to come back. Then I wouldn’t be able to talk to little people, sheep, or anything else.