A long walk home

Wild lilac

Because of the lockdown we always shut the dogs away when Mary-Ann brings shopping round, but walking with the dogs, I came out of the playing fields to see M-A and Sam with their two dogs walking along opposite. Bronte loves M-A and cries with delight when ever she sees her, and I had to restrain her on the lead as she started crying and whimpering, and trying to pull me to her. I held the dogs back as M-A went through the church yard and turned up the field behind. When I finally entered the field, M-A and Sam were already well up it and turning a corner, for they are fast walkers. Thinking it safe, I released the dogs, but Bronte caught the scent of her and raced across the field until she too disappeared in the distance while Byron stayed by my side. Eventually, whistling and calling, Bronte raced back, but I knew if I set off in that direction she'd race off again. I therefore walked a different and long way home.

The hidden phone mast 

The early blossom and spring flowers are fading now, but others are coming in profusion in the hedgerows, such as the magnificent bushes of wild lilac pushing valiantly through the briars. Suffolk has long, gentle, rolling hills, so different from Norfolk and the Cambridge fens. I seemed to walk miles and ended up seeing hills and farms that were all new to me. Finally I came out to a landmark I recognised: the telephone mast disguised as a dead tree. It is hidden in a corner field, and had to be built this way to overcome objections from the locals. Many of the trees in the hedges are equally dead, blighted perhaps by some fungus, leaving just brambles and thorn trees.

At last I could see Hundon, a tiny, quiet village nestling in the hills. It hasn't changed much in its boundaries or population since the Doomsday Book, and lies neglected by the rest of the country. Now there are plans to build housing on the fields above the town, turning it into another soulless commuter town, with too many cars for its tiny roads and the mini-shop manned by volunteers.

Back home, Ann found an old hip flask still filled with whisky from our sailing days. She poured a drop and tried it, saying it was quite good and the only whisky she had liked. Then she poured the rest into a glass, but it came out a thick sludge, solid with black sediment, perhaps from dissolving the steel of the flask and oxygenation from a false seal. Heaven knows what had happened to it, but it had not matured in a good way.

Hundon village across the fields behind a dead tree