Village

My rural surroundings don't offer the kind of gleaming geometrical structures from which I love to frame semi-abstract cityscapes, but here between the contorted, very ungeometric frame of a tree in an ancient hedgerow are some of the scattered and heaped blocks of my village, with its mix of housing, often more crooked than straight, spanning eight centuries.

J had her PA S with her, so I took the opportunity for a somewhat longer walk than usual and put my boots on to climb to the top of the Downs at the opposite side of the valley. After walking briskly up the first stretch of Chalk Pit Lane, so narrow between its banks and hedges that a car could not safely pass me, I climbed the steps up the bank beside the old chalk pit and followed the tiny, rough footpath along the line of the hedgerow, with its intermittent views down to the village. It climbs steeply through rough and currently ungrazed meadows with some beautiful old oak trees, then emerges onto the flat hilltop fields, where winter wheat is growing in neat, vivid green lines. Wild gusts of wind blurred the branches and made it difficult to hold the camera steady, and the light was poor for photography, hazy, damp and fading fast in the November afternoon, but it felt good to be there. I thought about my father, who loved "a good blow" on a high hilltop with a huge view: such places always awaken warm memories of him. He would have loved it here. I watched cows clustered round their circular hay rack, lifting their heads to examine me with mild curiosity, and reluctantly decided it was too late for a longer, circular route home. I returned downhill, taking a slightly different route through the meadow from which I enjoyed more open views across to our house, almost completely hidden from this angle by its surrounding trees but easy to locate in relation to its neighbours. Dusk was approaching, so I must return in better light to photograph this view.