Life and Death in Ashbourne.

The local council (or it might be the county council or possibly the Highways Agency) are being creative at the moment with the layout of roads and pavements in Ashbourne. Ever since March (I think) there has been a plethora of heavy plastic barriers re-directing both pedestrian and vehicular traffic in furtherance of street refurbishment work. It changes nearly every week and resembles Hampton Court maze, and is due to carry on until November. It keeps the mind occupied because nearly every week it’s necessary to find a new way to get from A to B. I suppose it’s good for those who like to have their mind occupied. Mine’s dangerously overflowing as it is.

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I was in a charity shop today and an attractive young blonde woman kept shooting meaningful glances in my direction. Since I could think of no credible reason why she would do that, I chose to presume it was because she was not wearing a bra and had very little fabric covering the essentials. I only glanced once, you see (and very briefly, honest) but maybe it was enough for her to express the slightest hint of triumphalism in her Gen Z eyes. Maybe boomers are fair game for zoomers now that there’s a prevailing sense that the world doesn’t have much longer to survive in its present form.

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The sad but interesting sight was that of a dead hen pheasant lying on a pavement adjacent to a piece of road which is now open to traffic. ‘Maybe she didn’t know that the road now carries traffic and got hit by a car,’ you might suggest. Well, she was unmarked but definitely dead, so she probably had been hit by a vehicle. But there’s still a mystery. I’ve been shopping in Ashbourne for twenty three years and I’ve never seen a pheasant there before. Towns don’t have pheasants. They have pigeons, sparrows, and a few ducks on the river. Pheasants are birds of the woods and fields because their very existence is largely dependant on serving the recreational needs of country gentlemen and ladies who like to shoot things. Maybe that’s precisely what this little lady was trying to escape, only to get despatched by a speeding Volvo instead. Life can be like that.