Walking the Land

God, my senses are jammed, rammed, filled to bursting. This countryside, this Suffolk, is quite simply intoxicating at this time of year. All around me as far as the eye can see, and I live on a hill, the land is golden, the wheat and barley already cut but the stubble gleaming in the evening sunshine. There is no wind - look at my neighbour Mark trying to light his fire and failing, for proof. I stand still and stare, breathing deeply, and the dog watches me, puzzling over my stillness. I feel my eyes absorbing the sights, my brain drinking them in. I'm in heaven. On the way back from Yoxford the other day I spotted a large expanse of water near the Suffolk pink farmhouse that is the only building I can see from my garden. It is all of a mile away as the crow flies, though it seems closer. Yesterday evening I parked the car to see if I could get to the water. And I found myself in one of those fields, on one of those farm tracks, that makes your heart jerk in your ribcage for its sheer beauty, its essentialness. its absolute timelessness. I didn't find the water, and luckily I kept Hugo on a lead because, at the top of a rise overlooking sheets and sheets of pure gold, he spotted a large hare and tried to get away. Earlier in the day, out walking with Ruth and Val and Maisie the dog while I was working, Hugo disgraced himself by catching a rabbit right under their noses. Well, what's he for if not that? But they are squeamish, and he didn't drop it immediately which meant they had to intervene. I must admit my reaction was "That's m'boy!"

I'll be taking my weekend visitors to the magical place when they arrive later today. When the fields are ploughed ready for their planting they are special too, but I don't think there's anything to beat these bright stubbled spaces where as yet unripe blackberry bushes cascade on top of each other promising fruitfulness in a week or so, where the dust rises slightly as you tread the worn track aound the edges of the ancient land, where the heat forces you to slow your pace, the better to soak it all up. There's no noise save birdsong, and when the sky is Prussian blue as it was yesterday and is again today, it really is a feast for the senses.