Cooling Marshes, Kent, 7th December 2014

Thursday 3 July 2014

Mr Happy

I wish I'd taken my camera out tonight, the fields looked majestic in the sunset. But a camera wouldn't have done any justice in truth; no strong scent of honeysuckle as it laces up the hedgerow nor the warmth emanating from the feint and dizzy heads of wheat. The occasional clanking of the sprinklers straddling the rows of spring onions would instead be replaced with a generic image of modern lowland agriculture today.

There'd be no clip of the dragonflies' wings as it steamed past me and certainly no record of the two yellow wagtails skipping above the now substantially bushy potato field. I lucked on to these birds as I scanned the field idly, actually more engrossed by how previously invisible insects were now catching the light as they darted this way and that, like fireflies. But the birds appeared and darted across my view, alighting on the dark leaves, absolutely golden in that light.

Yellow wagtails don't breed on this site (although I'm sure they do in the wider vicinity) so it seems that autumn has begun. If there was any doubt of that, a minute later two swifts charged through the sky towards me and carried on determinedly past, sailing on, the south calling.

Walking back, a large dog with a glossy coat bounded towards me, closely followed in a less enthusiastic fashion, by an ageing, tall, thin chap in shorts and baggy t-shirt. The shirt was one of those ones with a big, grinning Mr Men character on - in this case, Mr Happy. I didn't suppose he'd bought it himself, but then really, I guess, that's not the point.

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