Climbing through hedges for the internet

15 October 2005

Having missed my exercise last weekend, I took advantage of the nice weather today and went for a walk. I started off on my usual route, but then took a detour onto what I thought was going to be a route I’d done only once before with Suzy. However, I took a left when a right would have been much more the ticket and so I ended up in the middle of the village … not quite what I was expecting. I hadn’t recognised anything especially on the way, but I have such little faith in my bearings and my memory that I don’t even listen to them when they’re right.

I wanted to go further than the middle of the village, so I turned back towards Church Lane, passing home and being unable to decided whether or not to pop in and have a drink. My feet eventually made the decision for me by continuing to propel me past the end of the road. So, off I trotted (trat?) to Church Lane, where I hoped to find some autumnal-looking trees, conkers and whatnot.

As I’ve said previously, the turning of the seasons amazes me and I was surprised to find almost no sign of the conkers that had littered the ground three weeks ago (though not as surprised as I was to work out that it was three weeks ago), but the fruit farm office had emptied their fire bucket full of fag ends, so one can’t complain. I found a few spiky horse chestnut shells here and there and piles and piles of acorns. I had fun taking shots of these with the camera set to macro. Sometimes I would simply hold the camera near the ground, click and see what happened, but other times you would have found me bum in the air, with my hair trailing in the leaves as I peered through the viewfinder.

At the church, I found that a portion of the graveyard that had previously been cordoned off was now open. When I’d been up there with His Highness in September, I didn’t know if the cranky old gate that was tied up was part of a fence to keep you out, but it turns out that it was tied up as a gate to keep the sheep in – the sheep that weren’t there (maybe they’d worked out the whole gate thing quicker than me). Anyway, I went through the gap and wandered among the ancient headstones. I saw a number of stones for families whose surnames now form road names roundabout. The ages of the deceased were also notable in many cases – 36 years, 45 years, even 8 days.

On my way home, I once more tried to get a picture of the rabbits that taunt me. Ok, they don’t actually taunt me, but they do sit on the other side of a hedge looking cute, while my camera fails to focus on anything other than the leaves and branches two feet away. If I was clever, I’d be able to get the photo, but I’m just not. I found a bigger gap in the hedge, so I thought i’d climb through. As you do. So I stepped up the bank, and got through the hedge into the clearing the other side. The trouble is, of course, the noise made by 30-odd kilos of human (or 30 kilos of odd human) scrambling through a hedge gives the cute bunnies plenty of warning of approaching danger and the bloody things had scarpered before I could say “Nikon”.