Sixty-two

I went for a very long trek through the snow with my ghost-dog Molly.  It was very very cold (-8C), but I became so hot that by the time I was halfway along I had stripped off my coat and hat and gloves. 

It was very disconcerting to come across two sets of human footprints, perhaps a man and a woman, one smallish, the other large.  And a dog or several dogs.  I consider this land MY meadow, and have rarely seen a living soul on my daily trails through field and forest for the past nine years.   Of course I followed the prints and they even knew the best place to cross the wall, so obviously have a knowledge commensurate with mine.  I felt almost violated at first, and then the meadow calmed me down, because if the meadow had accepted them then I would too.

Birds sang in the March sunshine, which is almost warm, beautiful whistling songs from cardinals and tufted titmouses. 

When I got home I hauled wood for half an hour until all the storage spots were full. 

I was cleaning out my drawers today and found an old diary from 2012, when we were in England for Emma and Stuarts' wedding.  We arrived a few days early so that we could go to visit our friend Stephen in Manchester for a few days.  We got on a train feeling like death from all the travelling and no sleep.

Diary excerpt 04/12/2012

On a train - fast one, travelling to Manchester.

A sign that said, "Tubular Erectors Ltd."

Subway, sitting waiting underground, an overhead walkway with a grille through which you can see people's legs walking, with a sign saying WAY OUT with an arrow pointing straight up, as if you had to climb up and get through the grille somehow to be able to get out.

Such beautiful rural landscapes in England, the green and pleasant land, sheep by the dozens with all their new little lambs. (sheep with twins, how does she feel, lying down and twins nuzzling)

Gorse, hedgerows, magpies, fields and fields of startling yellow rapeseed.

The man in front of me is having conversations on his cell-phone with all different people, his work, men, then he talked to his two little daughters, then his wife, quite friendly and helpful, no "love you" at the end though.
Then talking to a woman from work, laughing and laughing, a low scurrilous kind of laugh, and then at the end, a kind of whispered "Looking forward to seeing you tomorrow, it'll be..." and I couldn't hear the rest, whispered as though someone relevant on the train would hear him!

It's so usual, isn't it?

Barges on a slow little river/canal, locks, everything like Postman Pat's countryside, but in many happy-looking houses there are very unhappy people, cruelty is occurring, people are ambivalent about their sexuality, people are treating their old ones abominably.  But also there are people being kind to their children, being patient with their husbands. 

We feel like zombies, running on empty, Tim and I.

Beautiful clouds.

People talking loudly on cellphones, saying "Sorry?" intermittently in that very British way.

A cow-shaped cloud above a field of sheep.

Lots of nests and hawk-like birds, especially in one field, must be good mouse-hunting there.

So much history - ruins - so different from South Africa.

Taking pics from the moving train with my phone.

Black clouds hastening towards us with Black Angus cows in a large green field, calmly curled up at comfortable distances from one another, taking notice, or not, of our train whooshing past.

Only 5 stops on this train:  Somewhere, Stoke on Trent, Macklesfield (pouring with rain), Stockport, (getting bleaky), Manchester.

I hate golf-courses.

Ivy like a hand creeping color up a grey dirty railway embankment wall.

So interesting to read what you wrote a long time ago.  Writing it down makes it real, brings it back into focus, makes it easy to relive.