October comes around

The rotted straw manure that has been piled in long strips on the field labelled on the map as 'a paradise for goats' (now strewn with sheep), has been collected and spread onto other fields in the vicinity. Huge tractors with muck spreading credentials and gigantic ploughs have sped along our lane for several days. One night Captain Sensible wished to know where they were and what they were doing!!! It seemed like the fields had been cleared of all the dried brown sunflower heads and also the arid maize had been stripped from the now bare earth. Autumnal horizons were vast once again.

Big Feet came on the moonlit walk. I was very protective of her because of an experience many moons ago in wildest Suffolk. I was cat and house sitting and enjoying an evening walk on narrow lanes admiring the loyalty of a cat to follow it's temporary mistress when I picked up the aforesaid follower to protect it from a passing vehicle but the feline creature leapt out of my hands ... and that was that! I felt like Lady Macbeth. I sobbed for weeks ... and of course the worst was that I had to inform the owner. I have learned how to hold a cat and prevent it from leaping. The driver of today had seen our silhouettes and realised that we were being careful not to get too near the large machines.

The roaring tractor stopped in the lane, at the end of it's working hours, and a tall young man whom we did not know jumped down from his cage and shook our hands. After a few pleasantries CS was invited for a ride around a field. You should have seen the smile on his face when he emerged from his sturdy steed, exclaiming that the last time he had ridden on a tractor was 45 years ago, as a young man in Israel working on the border of Gaza, with armed Danish soldiers supposedly guarding the volatile hotspot.