Rural affairs

It is very late and I have only just got round to starting to write. 

I am on the taxi rank, after our adventures, it seems to be months ago since I was here last but it is only two nights. 

We woke up this morning at the farm. 

Not really at the farm, of course, not the bit that belongs to Mark’s sister and that she still hasn’t sold, but in our own field, just across the little road. We opened the curtains and then the window. We could do this even though we were still in bed, because there was nobody there to notice that we were not dressed, and drank our coffee whilst we looked out at our world. 

We listened to the silence, broken only by a shouting jackdaw who seemed to be having a disagreement with a hovering kestrel. The morning was grey, and still, and damp, and smelled of fresh grass and sheep. The sheep had come up to investigate the van whilst we had been asleep, and knocked over our bench and left footprints all round the fire. Mark said that this had made the dogs bark, but I hadn’t heard them. Not many interesting things happen to sheep, and I imagine that we were the objects of much curiosity, although it is not easy to guess what sheep might be thinking about.

We got dressed and went for a walk around our kingdom.

We explored grassy corners and Mark showed me the bit that had once been an orchard, still fruiting white damsons and cherries. A couple of little streams gurgled through it, and there were fresh badger tracks. We found a carefully dug hole beside one sett, filled with poo, the badger’s latrine, tidily arranged out of the way of the entrance. 

We are going to need a tractor. 

Mark has been going on about a tractor for ages, but I have always refused, on the grounds that there is no room for one in the garden. We are going to need one now, though, because we do not want this splendid space to deteriorate into brambles and stinging nettles, and we have got to do something with the drains. 

The weather forecast promised rain, but we thought perhaps that we would have some time before it turned up. We ate an enormous breakfast of bread and cheese, and Mark built me a scaffolding beside the van so that I could paint. Then he went down the field to repair an old bench that stands on the field just on the roadside.

This has been there for years, and had almost completely collapsed. Mark has been wanting to fix it for ages, because it is just perfect for people to sit on when they are walking the Dales Way footpath and would like a rest and to look at the fells. 

He cut lengths of timber and I climbed on the scaffolding and started to repaint the roof. You can see this in the picture. It had faded dreadfully. 

It was a happy feeling, being outdoors in the autumn-scented air. The dogs charged about barking at birds and rolling in muddy patches. They are town dogs and do not know what is important in a field. They are used to the Library Gardens, where there is lots of interesting wee to sniff, and do not know how to hunt out a rabbit.

In the end the skies turned a threatening sort of grey colour, and an icy wind whipped up through the valley, swirling the leaves and tugging at the branches, and making the dogs restless and excited.

We lacquered the paint and put everything away just in time, because the rain followed close behind the wind. 

We loaded everything that we needed safely into the van and set off for home.

We arrived back just as the first spots of rain reached it, which was just as well, because diligent readers will recall that one of the things that we did on our brief visit home yesterday was to hang out the washing. 

We rushed about, bringing in the washing and unloading, then we scrubbed the camper van clean and took it back to its parking space.

We lit the fire and filled the washing machine and tidied up.

We were starving by then, and ate more bread and cheese, urgently, the way you do when you have left it for too long.

It was raining hard.

We went for a sleep before work.

It is almost time for another one.