They took me in

I’ve been transfixed by memories of our time as a family spent in Wales. One summer I worked on the farm below the house. It was such a change from our lives in Linton in Cambridgeshire.

Today I took the car to Stefano to get the timing belt changed. Walking back I passed these vines
done in the old style, tied in with willow strips.

I find I sometimes us my entries here as a kind of notebook. Everything does not have to be finished or perfected. There is room for the rough and ready; space for stuff just to be as it is in a particular moment.

They took me in:
Into their lives
Their work
Their house
Their meals.
Shared tractors
Hay forks
Midges
Fields
Drains
Heavy bales
Dodgy brakes
Laughter.
They were the sunshine of my life that year;
Shone me a different path in the dark;
Showed me that a metal tractor seat
And sunburnt forearms were a thing as well.
That oak trees made fence posts,
That everything had its place;
Could be recycled and reused:
The old van became a hen house.
That obstacles could be moved,
Backing the bull away by sheer force of will;
That shouted exasperated commands
On mountains tops
Were about more than gathering sheep:
A stubborn proud independent way of life
Carved out
One field at a time
From the rock beneath.