A few moments from the week just gone:
- Four or five of us gather by the piano on Sunday to sing somewhat
hesitantly the four part harmonies of a couple of Christmas carols. The local
choirmaster, forgetting to change his clocks back, arrives an hour early for
the evening church service and so happily joins in with us.
- Looking up from digging over a patch of garden, I witness the birch
and willow trees being lit golden by a sunshaft, stark against the heavy grey
rainclouds behind. Later a rainbow forms an arch over them.
- The much-heralded storm of St Jude rages past in the early hours of
Monday morning but thankfully leaving very little damage in its wake. Our
sandbag defences prove needless.
- In one fell swoop I harvest the last of the prolific raspberries,
which have since been turned to jam, then harvest the last of the even more
prolific apples. The latter requiring a step-ladder and some very careful
balancing amongst a thicket of gnarly branches and twigs.
- Reversing the Citroen Berlingo into a ditch on the organic farm
belonging to Pilsdon’s Chair of Trustees, I have to be towed out by her
neighbour and his tractor.
- I drive a minibus-load of people on a wet windy Wednesday night to
Dorchester to catch a screening of Captain Phillips which garners a complete
spectrum of opinions from the Pilsdonites: “too violent”, “not violent enough”,
“too tense because I thought Tom Hanks would be killed”, “not tense because Tom
Hanks could never be killed”, etc
- Spending far too long peeling and chopping many beetroots of an
unusual and beautiful yellow-orange variety, I then have to accept assistance
from a kind soul to help me finish my roasted veg pasta bake in time for
supper.
- The fire alarm goes off at 6:20am dragging everyone out of bed
except for those already milking the cows. Apparently it’s caused by someone
having a shower in the wayfarer’s accommodation with the door open. Having
snuggled back under the covers, the bells are set off again just long enough
for me to drag myself out of bed a second time. And then they go silent.
- Clover, one of our three beef cattle, is taken off early one morning
to the abattoir. As she is led into the horsebox, another one, Boris, decides
it’s time to make a break for it and clambers out of his pen using his trough
as a step; he has to be rounded up and re-incarcerated. Although he doesn’t
know it, he has another year left. Boris was born shortly before I arrived at
Pilsdon in March 2012, I remember him as a calf being led around the farm on a
leash like a large stubborn dog.
- I wear my favourite Superdry shirt which until recently had a large
rip across the back. Now it sports an even larger tartan square patch that
covers half the back of the shirt, having been repaired by an occasional
visitor who specialises in needlework, and naturally attracts comments from
everyone. The overall consensus is that I am the vanguard of a new fashion in personalised
Superdry clothing.
- Dragging myself with excessive reluctance out of bed at 5:40am to
milk Snowdrop and Angelica, and to give half of Snowdrop’s milk to her little
black calf Jasmine who is kept separately; she sucks at the bucket’s teat with
a force approaching violence and the milk vanishes in seconds. In three days
time she will be weaned and only given solids (beef nuts).
- Visiting Matt and Mary one evening I am introduced to their new
mongrel puppy Sasha whose idea of a friendly welcome is repeatedly jumping up
on her hind legs and landing her forelegs on my crotch. They say she’ll calm
down in a couple of years (!)
All these and many more happenings, conversations, times by the
fireside, times on the piano, times in the church, times on the internet, times
asleep, glimpses of nature being even more stunningly glorious than usual, the
commonplace, the dull, the tiring, the fun, all add up to make one single week
at Pilsdon. Yet they all race past so
fast.
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