Curry Rivel November 29th

There is a freezing fog this morning that cloaks everything and doesn’t shift the entire day. It brings a dreamlike quality to the world – nothing is quite as it seems.

Straight lines of gossamer connect the saddle stone outside my front door to the bin – they look like silver tightropes. The air is still and droplets hang on branches waiting for their moment to fall. There seems to be a collective holding in of breath.

It is colder today. My breath is coming out in plumes as I pass Old Father Time standing with his scythe and egg timer on the side of the barn. The oak tree opposite in May Tree House has almost lost all its leaves and all its rooks too. There is one who sits at the top turning its head from side to side as if wondering where the rest are. A lone pigeon sits in one of the lower branches, its head sunk so far into its body all I can is its enlarged breast and the domed top of its head.

I cross the road and up the path to Holden’s Way where the path is strewn with the yellows and browns of fallen leaves. On the left is the old tennis court of Wiltown House where my grandfather used to play on a summer’s evening apparently wearing long trousers. As a little girl my mother used to be able to hear their voices ring out when she was trying to go to sleep.

In the top field I can’t see much. One of the telegraph poles is a dim outline. The far reaching views from here have been covered up today like a painting that has been covered with a cloth and stored away. All is quiet at Jane’s house. She is over ninety now. Her brain is perfectly in tact but her legs have gone and now uses a mobility scooter to get herself about. She must have been a widow for at least 25 years now. Anthony was the local farmer and, along with my grandfather, owned many of these fields.

Crows are my only other company up here, four of them with their funny head thrusting walk and then all of them taking off and melting into the grey like spectres.