Day 421: I Reconsider My Negative Preconceptions About Owning A Bale Of Hay

In the country not much happens if you are not going to work. For example, I am staying in a village, and definitely not much is happening. Today a dog came in and another dog lost its collar. The 93 year old poet across the courtyard asked us for tea but we didn't go. We walked to the pub for lunch, had some lunch, and walked back with the vicar's daughters.

The fish man came; this afternoon I sat on a chinz sofa reading OK!, looking things up on the internet and sorting out things like dentists' appointments and ground rent. At about four o'clock I ate a crumpet and touched some raspberries. (Talking of raspberries, I am still confused by OK!, which appears to be full of moon-faced trolls with one grade 'E' GSCE, fake tits, orange skin and a boyfriend who looks like a petty criminal, wearing frocks that look as if they were made for a low-rent transvestite.)

And yet despite the fact that there is not much going on I am cursed, for I am exciting and therefore attract excitement (much in the same way that I attract flies, fleas, cockroaches, beggars, lost tourists and terrace-building pathologists). Only yesterday, for example, I was looking at photographs of a cretin who wants to be Victoria Beckham (but in fact looks like a twopenny whore), when the door flew open.

"Do you want to come and see my bale?", shouted T. "It is really good. I made the farmer leave it behind but I paid him for it."

We walked out of the house and round the corner and up a hill. It was a nice evening, the kind of evening you only really get in England (or, more specifically, the bits of England that no-one can really afford to live in anymore unless they are millionaires with helicopters), but I still thought a trip to a bale was quite a rubbish thing to do.

As it happened the bale was quite good. It looks like this:










If you sit on it on your bottom and you look down the hill you see this:








It looks quite boring but really it is quite pretty, and it is a very good view to look at on a warm evening when you are about to move to Canada for three months and then probably up to and including forever, and are happy about it but also sad about some things.

It is also better than a field that looks like this:




Especially when you walk through it on the way to the pub and the bullocks (who look quite nice when they are not moving) start following you quite quickly.




* one of my loyal readers wrote to ask if they could rent it, but I cannot find the email! In response: possibly, next March, but it may be quite expensive.