Assassin

Hugo had his first kill today! We were meandering along the top of the field when, kerching, he darted into the barley and stayed there motionless for a moment. Then he emerged bearing a large wood pigeon in his beak. Calmly as you like he put the bird down but kept hold of it, and very gently he killed it just by the pressure and position of his mouth. There was no violence apart from the initial grab, no bloodlust, no high-fiving. I walked away feeling slightly sick, and he followed me, a few pieces of down stuck to his nose as the only indication of what had occurred. We went back to the summerhouse where Caroline had been dozing with her feet up on the sofa, and when I told her what had happened she said "Well done Hugo!", countrywoman that she is. She offered to go and get the breasts but I thought enough was enough. I'm not walking that way again until the body has been eaten. Hurry up scavengers, it's my favourite walk at the moment.

Caroline, Judy and David had come for lunch and bridge, and as usual we had a grand time. That most blissful thing happened when all three of them raved about the garden. Caroline, whose concern for the size of my task last summer filled me with doubt and anxiety, couldn't believe her eyes. "It really is lovely," she kept saying, and that led to her admitting one big regret, that she had never created a garden. She said she couldn't believe what I had achieved. The other two were rapturous as well. But of course, if they had only come the week before when the lupins were at their best and before the crazy rains had come it would have been far nicer.

We lingered for ages over tea in the summerhouse, the talk as usual returning to Suffolk and our different connections to it. Caroline leaves at the end of next month for a new life in Nottingham after over 60 years here. Judy came a year earlier, and she's staying. Their backgrounds and lives as farmer's wives were very similar yet they never met. Both lived in massive old near-derelict Elizabethan houses, neither had running water, electricity or heating. Wells had to be renewed, candles and lamps must have been a treacherous presence under thatch, and heating extended a few feet from whatever fire was lit. They were tough then and they're tough now, bringing up their families and working alongside their husbands cheerfully and uncomplainingly. They laugh a lot and shrug off adversity (oh dear, just chopped off my leg; go to the doctor? load of stuff and bloody nonsense!). That's them to the core.

The evening ended peacefully, the sun so hot I had to give up dead-heading the roses and seek some shade. Great sense of humour weather, thanks. There's something very restful about gazing at a view, the eyes relaxed into the long stare, the imagination stimulated and calmed at the same time. There isn't a mouse moving.