Gods Own Country

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Ramblers. Daft sods in pink and green hats. It wasn’t even cold. They moved down the field swing-swaying like a line of drunks, addled with the air and the land, and the smell of manure. I watched them from up top, their bright heads peeping through the fog.

Sat on my rock there I let the world busy itself below, all manner of creatures going about their backwards-forwards same as always, never mind the fog had them half-sighted. But I could see above the fog. It bided under my feet, settled in the valley like a sump-pool spreading three miles over to the hills at Felton.

The ramblers hadn’t marked me. They’d walked past the farm without taking notice, of me or of Father rounding up the flock from the moor. Oi there ramblers, I’d a mind for shouting, what the bugger are you doing, talking to that sheep? Do you think she fancies a natter, eh? And they’d have bowed down royal for me then, no doubt. So sorry, Mr Farmer, we won’t do it again, I hope we haven’t upset her. For that was the way with these — so respect-minded they wouldn’t dare even look on myself for fear of crapping up Nature’s balance. The laws of the countryside. And me, I was real, living, farting Nature to their brain of things, part of the scenery same as a tree or a tractor. I watched as the last one over the stile fiddled with a rock on top the wall, for he thought he’d knocked it out of place weighting himself over. Daft sods these ramblers. I went toward them.

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