Oh, to disappear

This morning, I was enjoying my usual pre-breakfast WhatsApp-fest with my very good friend H, swapping Wordle scores and animal anecdotes: she has a dog and two cats; I had two hares, one bunny and a murder of magpies in the back garden. Yes, I know that’s not the correct collective noun, but it is for crows, and magpies are part of the crow family, and I wanted to murder the magpies because they were chasing the bunny. I notice they didn’t chase the hares, probably because the hares would have boxed their cowardly heinies to kingdom come.

Another reason why I don’t like magpies is because I’ve seen them eyeing up the hollow ceramic deer-head on our back wall, the ornament we bought some years ago. Great tits took up residency just weeks after we hung it, where they’ve raised several chicks every year ever since. The adults often perch on the head, or on our nearby bedroom window sill, with small caterpillars in their beaks, having a quick reccy before popping through one of the eyes. This prompts a chorus of squeaks from the newly hatched, or soprano tweets from the almost-fledged. One summer we were sitting in the garden having a Pimms and saw the tit emerge from the head and land on a nearby silver birch, followed by another, then another… a total of six. We’d just watched the nest fledge. It was an uplifting experience.

Back to this morning and WhatsApp. I ended it by remarking to H, “God, I love living in the country,” and I do. I really do.

Just yesterday, I stepped outside my front door and momentarily scared the swallows and pied wagtails, who were enjoying a few minutes R&R sunning themselves on the car roofs. Outside the courtyard, six red-legged partridges scuttled down the lane.

Shortly afterwards, I came across two young hares chasing each other. They stopped, looked at me, and scarpered (who wouldn’t?) but only into the fallow field where they carried on with their playtime.

Through a rainbow of damselflies at the bridge over the brook. Need I say more?

Bored with tarmac-bashing and pothole-avoiding – this is Bucks after all, where there are more potholes than tarmac – I veered onto a public right of way through a spinney, around a field of wheat and over a stile. I was wearing pedal-pushers and badly nettled my ankles and lower calves: rather that than walk through ‘Urbanton’ and choke on traffic fumes and hordes of people. I don’t like people. They can be rude and ugly, unlike Mother Nature. I can relax in her company, work things out in my head, play devil’s advocate, say what I want to say, think what I want to think without fear of chastisement. I love her.

At the end of a short wooden bridge over a ditch into another wheatfield, a Chinese water deer sprang out of the crops onto the field margin, stopping about 50 yards away, emitting a vile scream. How any creature so gorgeous can utter anything so yukky is beyond me. I can’t describe it any better than a repetitive, rasping, unmusical “Yaowr”. Silly chump; if she’d stayed where she was, I wouldn’t have seen her and would have walked right past on the strip the farmer had cleared through the crops for walkers. Talking to H about it afterwards, we came to the conclusion that she probably had offspring and was trying to distract me towards her and away from the babies. Clever!

Quick aside, as is my want. Some people insist on the right to roam, especially on long-established footpaths across farmers’ fields. So, farmers are obliged to forge a path through their crops with weed killer, which is harmful to pollinators and worms. Alternatively, they could repeatedly cut a path with their machinery throughout the growing season, but that would burn more fossil fuels and emit more carbon and take up more of the farmers’ valuable time. If I come across a field that’s impassible, I don’t castigate the farmer; I walk around the edge. No hardship. But the usual suspects insist on their rights, ignoring their wider responsibilities whenever it suits their scattergun agendas.

Heading up the track to the top of the hill and almost home, buzzards and kites pranced and parried in the sky. I wondered what carrion lay beneath them. I came across the farmer feeding his cattle in the enclosure before they went to market. We like our little chats. This time he mused on the water shortages and how our valley was once mooted as a reservoir. The plans were shelved when it was realised that there wasn’t enough water in the Thames to feed it. Another reservoir has since been proposed near Abingdon, to be fed by the Thames. We wondered how they could justify that, given there would be even less water in the Thames today than 50 years ago. A wise man later told me that the Thames would be topped up by transfer from the River Severn. Sounds feasible, apart from the hundreds of acres of productive farmland that would be destroyed for the reservoir. A necessary trade-off? Not on your nelly. Average household water use is up 70 per cent since 1985, with a typical person using 149 litres a day, thanks to power showers, dishwashers, car washing, and general greed and wastage. Demand-management, People. That should be the numero uno policy solution for everything.

I got home, hot, sticky but fulfilled. Tired yet refreshed. I popped straight back out into the garden to watch blue tits peck aphids off the roses and listen to bees nuzzle the cranesbill.

I’ve read several books – fiction and autobiographies – about people leaving ‘civilisation’ to commune with nature 24/7/365. It’s tempting. Just me and nature, plus my music – I’d take my CDs and an old CD player, and my piano – my books (all of them? Yup), H’s cat (the one she doesn’t like very much), a gun – for hunting and in lieu of an Alsatian – my Maggie Thatcher mug, my favourite designer handbag (I have standards), gin (maybe a little tonic), and my phone and laptop, but I’d change my number and email address, only telling a favoured few.

Would I get bored? Nah. I’d set up another blogspot, anonymous this time so I could write exactly what I wanted to and not feel compelled to hold anything back ... I’m gonna need a bigger gun.