Timeless

It's October now, and the air has turned quite wintry. Strong winds from the west haven't helped, but wrap up warmly when you venture out and you can't help feeling exhilarated. The leaves are just beginning to turn, in this corner of Suffolk anyway, and there are few on the ground. The drainage pipes in the field behind me have been laid, and the earth raked over, a job that took a whole day to complete in a slow-moving tractor. You'd never know how disruptive the pipework had been. Other fields around me are already showing green shoots of wheat and barley, but mine was delayed and so is yet brown, smooth and bare. This morning Hugo and I walked the whole way around it for the first time in a couple of months, a renewed joy in itself. And as we neared the first corner I looked back to see my house. The freshly-turned earth, the old farm labourer's cottage with its red-tiled outbuilding jutting comfortably onto the land - it all looks so timeless, as if you could blink and the 20th century had not yet happened. Living in a city or town, apart from the variations in temperature you are barely aware of the real impact of the seasons, the absolute changes to the terrain, the spaces around you. But in the country you are surrounded by the daily signs of the passing year, the gentle clues of the coming one. For me a newly-ploughed field is the quintessence of life, the people who work it, the food it will grow, the husbandry that will keep it fertile. The methods are different, but the function and appearance are the same. The sight, mixed with the coolness in the air, the heaviness of the sky, never fails to fill me with elation, and awe too. I'm succoured by it, sustained.

The far ...

... and the near

I'm currently trying to complete two application forms, one for an Irish passport to which I am entitled thanks to two Irish parents, and the other for tickets to see Lohengrin at Bayreuth next year. The latter is completely in German, which is double-Dutch to me. The former asks questions I don't understand, and therefore don't know how to answer. Writing my name and address in a blue biro which I thought was black, I have to go over the words again with the proper pen. Nothing is straightforward. I put them to one side and instead brought in some logs for the woodburner tonight. Lighting the fire in the evening is a well-established routine now and I look forward to the ritual and the result. Just another of the pleasures of winter.