A Walk On The Quiet Side

What a glorious day. The sun was shining when we got up, so we thought this would be a good day to make good our neglect of the dog and took him out for a walk, which was ace. It was still and sunny and fresh, and we thought we would head up towards Cleabarrow, which is a mass of narrow and rambling half-track-half-road, farmers’ byways through the rough land at the back of the village and below the open fells. We splashed through little fords and looked at patches of snow and bramble with wisps of wool caught in it, and moss and last year’s bracken, and saw some buzzards slowly spiralling in the thermals. Mark told me about his wild youth racing land rovers round the fields, and about his nine year old grandfather working as part of a gang of dry-stone wallers, working in teams to haul stone from the ploughed fields and becks and fit it neatly into the growing wall, and each man having his own special part of the skill: and he showed me a wall he had built himself in his own youth. We looked at the sheep and were very glad that we didn’t have any, and he pointed out the ground where there might be fluke and explained how he had sometimes done brain surgery on sheep to try and get eggs out of their brains when they had farmed in the bitter seventies winters, and sometimes it had worked although not always if it had been too late.

We walked back through the village where his niece was loitering about on the Rec with a crowd of other teenagers, I wanted to shout and wave, but he wouldn’t let me, which turned out to be sensible, because she saw us and gave the briefest of nods before turning deliberately away to carry on with her youth undisturbed. We went through the council estate, which I really like because there are so many lovely tidy little gardens, all different, with patches of crocuses and snowdrops, and interesting things to look at like little windmills and garden gnomes: all side by side with the occasional villain who has defiantly adorned theirs with some bits of motorbike and old sofas and shopping trolleys. There was a man washing his car who straightened up and beamed when Mark told him how lovely and shiny the colour was, and some children who wanted to stroke the dog so I let them, and he bore it nobly with agony in his eyes and a growl in his heart. I was cross with Mark, who had made himself late for his barber’s appointment, so he had to leave me at the end and rush off into the village, but he made it in time, so it didn’t matter, and I tried really hard and managed not to say: ” I told you we were getting late” hardly very much at all. He has got a nice haircut now as well: which is just splendid. Off to work now. Taxis are calling.