Another Country Diary #3

With wild bees, a white-tailed eagle, and underground cables.

The scourge of all townlings and city slickers is back with another dose of country diary. The previous instalment of ‘Another Country Diary’ can be read HERE

26/9

Three days of teaching, office work, meetings—energising and exhausting in equal measures. Today I’m working from home, emails and reading and marking. It rained in the night, heavy pummelling on the windows and tiles, noisy through the thin skin of our cottage. There is a smell of damp soot in the dining room and I remember that the chimneys have not yet been swept. The sky turns light and dark and light again. Charcoal clouds scud low above the trees. Blue sky comes and goes. Benji, our older cat, goes out in the morning and arrives back exhausted by lunchtime and sleeps. I read and I read and I read.

In the afternoon I take a break and set out on the quick walk to the parish church. The route takes me past the village noticeboard, with its flyers from Yoga teachers and its pleas for new members of the parish council, then o…