Saturday 12th November

People are unique, sometimes I wish I could take a photograph of all the personalities in the village, looking at Nigel's lined bearded face the other day wondering what life had thrown at him., I was again struck by the people attending the Cheese and Wine function yesterday in the church.  We walked along the unlit path between the yews yesterday, dark as the ace of spades, to enter the church to a buzz of words and then the lights going off, so that darkness also reigned in its interior.  Yes you can't run the lighting with the electric heating in our church! So we sat and chattered with wisps of cold clouds coming from our mouths, someone standing by the meter to trip the electricity, candles fluttering on the tables.  This on Remembrance Day, though the official ceremony is on Sunday, our money would go towards an airforce charity I think.

Food was laid out, neatly on the trestle tables, one glass of free wine, then you had to donate for the second.  Not terribly well attended, but with he same old faces, us newbies, Jim and Irene, Rachel and John, the rest were truly local.  I sat next to Peter, the church warden getting very old and frail now that I worry about him but he set out to assure me, and he talks for a very long time, that he was perfectly fit.  John and Rachel who own the land behind us told us about their two beautiful retrievers one of which has had to lose a leg because of a tumour, how the decision had been difficult and I remembered going through the same worry with Moss so many years ago.  Bernie our historian had come down from Kent for the occasion, he loves the village and already has his plot in the grave yard.

What strikes you though is the age of the local people, what will happen when they all die out, I know I am being negative here but these churches slowly fall into a 'Sleeping Beauty' phase the rot setting into the fabric, money no longer spent on their welfare.  One new piece of news, apparently below the cottage that was demolished to make way for two new houses, there was a cellar, full of treasures like grandfather clocks and furniture, but the villagers helped themselves to all this according to the builders.  Think this story will go down in generations to come about the 'treasures' that lay below Mary's cottage.

The photo below reminds me of a beautiful walk yesterday across the fields, the crab apples glowed like gold, a tinge of pink on the lower ones, unfortunately no camera, but a buzzard left the shelter of the trees by the river and also a great flock of our winter visitors, red wings I think though all I saw was very brown thrushes in the strong light of the sun.  Leaves lie around the garden in untidy tumbles, very windy overnight and a constant drizzle but when the sun shines everything becomes so beautiful.