I’m on holiday, so have penned three short pieces inspired by my countryside idyll. I hope you enjoy them all!

This perfect patch of blue, framed by curtains flung wide. The big city, frenetic with self-importance, lingers only as a distant fragment on the edge of my thoughts.

This perfect patch of blue, punctured by a bird of prey, intent, suspended, focused on the earth below. I too am suspended, in splendid isolation.

———–

We are mesmerised by her sudden twist of friendliness. Her tail twitches imperiously.

Follow me.

We take the cat’s eye tour – the cow barn, the hens, the sheep scattered over the mountain fields. Finally, we reach her boundary, a nodding dandelion not quite at the end of the meandering lane. A final writhe of fur around legs, and she is gone, trotting back to her fireside sanctuary.

Goodbye for now, puss.

————

A tractor, bouncing on man-tall tyres – the driver waves us past.

A ewe and her twin lambs, scampering to the steep verge, eyes wide, stopping to chew on grass, just in case.

A mud-splattered van, straining to chug to the top of the hill, clouds of fumes belching from a rusting exhaust.

This is rush hour in the countryside.