Walking The Dog 3

The fields have been ploughed and scattered this week.   My memory tells me that the ploughing should take place in the depths of winter so that the frosts can break up the great clumps of soil but that’s not the way it’s done in Emsworth.

Instead the local farmer brings in contractors who arrive in huge leviathan beasts, each worth a brace of Aston Martins, that devour the stubble fields and transform them into finely graded seedbed.

Think of the effort of lifting one spade of compacted soil.  The plough carves down three spades deep and four spades wide with each of six blades.  The earth surrenders to its mighty force and is exposed rich red and raw.  Then a massive grader, its huge weight hauled at speed across the fields smashes the soil into powder.  Only then does the farmer drive out his John Deere, looking puny by comparison and sets it to seeding and raking.  In the space of three or four days the work is completed.

The new scenery brings out a burst of fresh exuberance from Capone.  He gallops across the fields, his energy enough to lift any mood.  His sheer joy at being perfectly expresses the purpose of a dog.  He and the intimate experience of a walk with my best friend is the most powerful of therapies requiring no theory or structure, just the doing of it.  Perhaps more like a meditation or prayer.

With age the individual senses diminish in power but I find that there is a greater discernment between them.  I hear birdsong now like I never used to.  The pleasure of the birds, the sea, the sky, the light and the breeze is all so much more intense and the unreserved, joyous companionship of my dog makes it all the more so.

The most extraordinary things happen every day to those of us that indulge in this most universal hobby of walking the dog.  Last week, and I kid you not, from behind an isolated cottage, flew a second world war US fighter plane at no more than 200 feet.   Breaking every civil aviation rule in the book, it sent Capone and me diving for the nearest slit trench convinced that we were its target.

Regularly the Chinooks fly over Chichester harbour, their massive thumping beat pulverising the air.  If you happen to be wading through a large area of eight foot tall bullrushes it is so easy to imagine the rattle of M16s and the threat of napalm descending from above.

But the real dangers that lurk here are of a more rural nature.  The most marmalade orange, malevolent cat saunters along the church wall, a half dead rat clamped in its teeth.  The nasty fat corgi, its belly dragging on the ground and while Capone ambles by it leaps up and bites him on the back of the neck!

Spring is accelerating towards summer now.  The grasses and nettles in the hedgerows are lush.  The trees are turning a deeper green and filling out their magnificent silhouettes but the earliest crop in Emsworth is the forest of masts that’s sprouting everywhere you look.

Peter Reynolds 14-05-08

I've been reading about Whistler, and his deliberate choice of muted palettes. I've never-ever been one for Muted Palettes. I like bright rich blues, and reds, and gorgeous silky greens. I like Kandinsky and Chagall and Frida Kahlo, with their peacock colours. But I also like Whistler, and his Nocturnes, Harmonies and Symphonies. With their muted, faded palettes, but gorgeous still.

Today was a muted day. There was not heavy frost, nor bright sunshine, but I went out and took the camera anyway (partly to see the overflowing river-water on the fields, partly to grab some special time with my eldest daughter). And I think I came back with some treasure. The photographs aren't as immediately pretty as the frosty ones, but they're interesting, and I'm fascinated by the colours in the seed-head one. So there we go. A muted hedgerow, but still interesting.

I spent much of yesterday in Ludlow, in the rain. We went first to DeGrey's Tearoom, the children and I, and then to the castle. The tearoom is what you would think a DeGrey's tearoom should be like. It has waitresses with little aprons (it must employ half the teenage girls in Ludlow on a Holiday basis), and real china. The tea is leaf tea, and comes with a little pot of water. And the cakes (you get a choice of 'Cream Tea' or 'Afternoon Tea') come on a little three-tiered stand, with aplomb. The building is Tudor, and the whole experience like going back to the 1930's. The sandwiches (I chose salmon and cucumber) come beautifully arranged, as if they had been dressed by an old-fashioned couturier. It is a rather gold-plated experience, but one we cope with it by the children sharing the sandwiches and scones, and my not having a choice of fancy cake (yes, they are called 'Fancy Cakes'). And it's worth it, just for the sheer fun of the small ceremonial of it all.

Ludlow castle, if you ever get the chance, is well worth a look around. It's not too large to be scarily imposing, and there's plenty of room for children to run around. There are many tall winding staircases to spooky towers, and an ice-house under the moat which doubles as a skeleton-rattling dungeon. The views are suitably viewish, although the experience does lack the terrifying thrill I've experienced in some Cadw properties, which seem to specialise in surprising twists like unmarked 200ft drops to the waiting sea. I can only deduce that the Welsh do not believe in Fencing Children In. Or they are conducting some experiment to do with natural selection.

Let me introduce you to my good friend, Swain Dundreary...
 Dundreary/Dundrearies are long, full sideburns or mutton chop whiskers.
Also called, dundreary whiskers...

"...and young Swain Dundreary from up Wildboarclough saw her first out in the fields whilst on his way home from the Dog's Paw Inn.

She smiled so sweetly that he forgot to breathe and then pressed the place under his oilskin coat beneath his clean handkerchief to where his heart beat. Her black hair shone silkily despite the blanket of grey above them. She stepped boldly toward him, gently swaying her basket of wildflowers, and he found the sense to remove his father’s worn, old hat before he spake. He found his voice, though husky, to ask, "W.where be you fra'?"

She giggled softly - a sound like tinkling water over small pebbles in the glen. "Fra' by the Wootton Wawen, though we hail fra' Coxlodge - Northumberland, or more lately St. Giles without Cripplegate.’ Her green frock fell loosely about the delicate bones of her shoulders, half-covered by a new-looking dove-grey crocheted shawl.

"Oh? The Wootton Wawen is close by here...I hae' not seed you afore, sweetling. What be your name, then?" He dared a step closer, to see her large, grey eyes and thought her quite fey looking.

"Herie Amphia Willda Window. My mother was fra' Courk Snaith and Da's family be fra' Barrow upon Soar, Yardley Gobion, Potterspury, Northamptonshire."