Timewasting

This week l don't seem able to settle down and concentrate, l fidget and waffle about, drink coffee, walk the dog, sweep up the leaves and open the shop but l just can't sit down in the office, open up the accounts software program and get cracking on invoices, bills, statements and bank reconciliations. The mind is not engaged. The computer is turned on, the pages from ebay open, emails shoot back & forth but, as the business returns to the seasonal norm perhaps l too am slowing down or am l getting ready to either hibernate or fly south for the winter?



The geese stream across the sky & l watch. Where would l go? I think l might like to visit India and travel around in an elderly car taking in the sights and sounds and smells. Staying overnight in glittering palaces, sipping gin & tonic as the sun sets behind the Himalayas. Riding through the tea plantations as dawn breaks.


Oh hell, you daft bat, stop it. Pull yourself together. You must ring up that customer who hasn't paid for 8 weeks and give them what for................!

Late September

Just when you think that the warmth of the summer months has gone, you are surprised by a last blast of the sun's warmth, although the nights are now drawing in and the evenings cooler, the days feel warm and balmy. The Indian Summer. September, which last year was wet and dank topped by the global down turn, has been replaced this year with a warm & very, very dry September

Already the skies and stubble fields are proving welcome resting stations for the flocks of pink footed geese that noisily swoop low over head, making their final approach into wind to roost over night on the Cliff Top field which as yet has not been cultivated and thanks to the combine misfunction seems to have plenty of wheat left on the ground.

The hedgerows too seem to be enjoying a bumper harvest, along the farm walk the rowans are positively groaning under the weight of their glossy berries, hips & haws make up the contingent of the brilliants reds whilst the blackberries & elderberries tempt in the small flocks of birds with their juicy, sweet fruit. Thistles that we left for the wildlife are now awash with frothy white seed heads providing a welcome snack bar for the gold finches which provide a flash of bright colour as they flit from plant to plant. The hedgerows seem to be at their noisiest what with the twittering and chirping of the frantically feeding bird. The countryside is at its peak, a mad flurry of fruit & seeds, falling leaves and migrating birds, a rush before the slowing down of life in the approaching winter months.

september..dog days

Summer is over. The schools have gone back today, all those badly parked cars jammed outside the village schools gates again. Peace returns at last. The peace it would seem is in the form of an Indian summer, blue skies, wispy, high cirrus cloud, swirling & swooping swifts, the new seasons babies practicing their acrobatics before their long journey south for the winter. Skeins of geese are busy circling stubble fields in search of spilled grain.

Here, the land has returned to the brown earth of the ploughed & rotavated fields, waiting for the break crop of oil seed rape to be sown. Areas of grassland flooded in the june floods have now been re-seeded & it will be interesting to see if these new lays flourish with the addition of the nutrients from the flood water.

The ice cream parlour, after a more than hectic august, is now settling down to a more leisurely pace. August was certainly manic & as a rough guide, has been our busiest ever. All our visitors have been in excellent form, not a cross word, grumble or complaint. It has almost been as though with the weather being so crap in June & July, then with August being of a marked improvement, nothing was going to get in the way of their days out, so bring out the ice cream!

The farm walk has been enjoyed by old a young. Withow gap has been dammed & bridged by young construction engineers whilst the more imaginative have been making pebble boats & castles. Talking about castles we had one little boy come in with a vivid scar across his forehead. His day was made when one of the lads commented that 'he was a real wizard'!