Two geese and counting

The cottage beside the bridge in Lower Fishguard is the last one still in the hands of local fisher people whose nautical clutter strews the bank. There were four geese here once, often to be seen swimming, feeding or resting in these shallows where the river enters the harbour. Then there were three. Now only two remain and like the dilapidated cottage and its dwellers their days may also be numbered.

The year has ended and new one has begun. It seems appropriate to recall the familiar lines from the beginning of East Coker by T.S.Eliot

In my beginning is my end. In succession
Houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended,
Are removed, destroyed, restored, or in their place
Is an open field, or a factory, or a by-pass.
Old stone to new building, old timber to new fires,
Old fires to ashes, and ashes to the earth
Which is already flesh, fur and faeces,
Bone of man and beast, cornstalk and leaf.
Houses live and die: there is a time for building
And a time for living and for generation
And a time for the wind to break the loosened pane
And to shake the wainscot where the field-mouse trots
And to shake the tattered arras woven with a silent motto.