Small Livings

Today the grey cloud lies heavy on the land, there is a light rain that slowly falls, so different from yesterday when the sun shone in a brilliant sky and the air was cold.

This tree was golden and so shapely, that little building was the coke house for the church and now is the only place you can find violets in the grass in spring.

The view over the fields with the Howardian Hills in the far distant and sheds

We look over Nigel's small fields in which he keeps a small flock of dark sheep, two nanny goats, a kid, and hens and ducks.  He houses everything in one of the dozen sheds he has, and his happiness lies in 'mending sheds' I think.  Every day he goes out with a sack and finds fodder for the goats accompanied by his new dog Sasha, a large very friendly mongrel, who seems to have settled in well in her new household.  The rhythm of his life grounds one in the morning, as the goats chase after him, and the hens spread themselves over the field.  We believe he has found happiness, not one for village events he and his wife keep to their world.

Our milkman comes four times a week bringing milk, orange juice and the papers on Saturday.  Milk delivered, who would have thought it in this day and age. This morning he also bought a large heavy sack of different wild bird food.  Peanuts for the ever hungry squirrel that spends time digging up the garden in the hope he can find one of his lost hoards. Wild bird seed soon disappears each day and the hungry pigeons sit forlornly on the bird table hoping for manna from heaven.

When I was a child on the weekend I would accompany the milkman on his round of the place where we lived, he had a pony and trap and the one and only time I was allowed to hold the reins the pony bolted with a great rattle of milk bottles.