On Millie's Carrot and the Magic of Spring.

The dinner was eaten, the dishes washed, the floor vacuumed, and still the evening was truly vernal and demanding my presence outdoors.

So I went out laden with carrots to find Millie the Horse. She gave me the slip last night, so tonight I tried a different tactic. I went up the lane to the top of her field where there’s a stile and saw her grazing about a hundred yards away. I climbed the stile and walked towards her, holding out a carrot to serve as a ticket to gain access to her esteemed presence.

She watched me for a few minutes, started to walk slowly towards me, and then changed her mind. Clearly she was nervous and began to amble to one side. ‘OK,’ I thought, ‘new tactic. Stand still, keep the carrot in sight, and let her come to you in her own time. And so she did – eventually. It took her a while but she duly arrived and accepted her first piece of carrot. And then she wanted another, and another, and when there was only one left which I intended for another horse in another field, she was having none of it. As soon as I tried to walk away she followed me closely, nudging my shoulder in the way women do when they want something and won’t let you go until they get it.

Another tactic was required: take the last carrot (which was fortunately quite a big one), break it into three pieces, give Millie one of them, and put the other two on the ground where she could see them. It worked. I left Mistress M cheerfully chomping on raw carrot while I walked back to the stile and headed off down the lane. The sun shone, wisps of white cloud hung benignly in the blue bowl of evening, the warm air ruffled not so much as a blade of grass, and all was right with the world for a change. And it didn’t end there because the evening was still too seductive to be wasted indoors.

I went and fetched my shovel and spent half an hour clearing the mud, tree seeds, and other detritus soiling the road grids. An old lady drove past me while I was so engaged, parked her car by the green triangle at the end of Bag Lane, and began strimming the grass. Finding myself to be in a rare amicable mood, I decided to exchange a few words with my fellow worker. We complained about the tractor drivers who mount the kerb of the little grassy triangle, leaving deep, ugly tyre tracks along one side of it. She told me that they really didn’t need to do that, and having been a farmer’s daughter, she should know. Since she looked to be in her late seventies at least, and having noticed the line of white beard growth on one side of her chin, I conceded the point without hesitation.

And still the evening hadn’t stopped seducing me with its vernal charms. For the first time in around seven months, I took my mug of tea and pack of biscuits into the garden and watched the sun set over the Weaver Hills across the valley.

So who says I’m not responsive to the odd charms that life has to offer on the odd occasion when it chooses to do so?