Preparations for a holiday

In the last fifteen months of intermittent lockdown, we have become more connected to our home. As we think about going away for a week, in the summer, we discover just how much.  The prospect of leaving certain things untended is harder, the list of favours that we have to ask of friends and neighbours longer.

Our doves have grown habituated to Nigel’s presence in the back garden.  They crowd round him, ostensibly to be fed, but primarily for his bird-talk, a stream of idle chat suited to domestic fowl.   When on holiday, we can arrange for them to be fed, but who will keep them up to date with the news? 

Likewise, a young friend from church has agreed to water the plants, but they will surely miss our coaching and encouragement.  I’m sure they will continue to photosynthesise without us, but they will lack enthusiasm.

As for the dozens of wild birds who visit our garden, they may never forgive us.  Our regular supply of seed and suet has already helped them raise one brood.  How could we leave them at what is a critical moment for their second brood?

But our young friend has agreed to re-fill the feeders for us.

So we can leave our house for just a little while and spend some time with our own brood.

Never nudge a pony

 

Annabel and I grabbed a change of scene and a couple of nights camping in the New Forest.

We camped at a pop-up site – Harry’s Meadow and every excursion took us through the village of Woodgreen.  I would slow the car to a crawl and we would admire the many donkeys which, together with their foals were hanging about in the middle of the mainstreet, occasionally browsing from the grass verge with a studied insouciance as I slalomed round them.

But on the second evening, we went through Woodgreen and saw not one solitary donkey. 

‘That’s odd,’ said Annabel, ‘I wonder where they’ve all gone?’

As we approached the wooded road to the campsite our route was blocked by traffic cones.  Puzzled, I stopped.

A floppy-haired man stepped out of the shadows and explained in an upper-crust accent that the road was blocked by a fallen tree.  We told him we were headed for Harry’s Meadow and he gave us directions, with repeated injunctions not to follow the Satnav as it would take us into an un-surfaced wilderness. 

As we pulled away, Annabel and I both agreed that he had been the dead spit of Hugh Grant.

We followed his circuitous route – ‘Did he say left and then right or right and then left?’  And it was on this narrow road that we made a discovery. 

It was here that the donkeys of Woodgreen spent their evenings.

And the cows.

And the ponies.

And none of them at all was cowed by an approaching car. 

‘Just give that pony a nudge with your car,’ suggested Annabel.

‘No thanks, it’ll be my number plate it kicks.’

But when eventually we got safely back to the tent, we raised a glass to Hugh Grant and his excellent travel directions.