Monday, April 27, 2009




One of the pleasures, I think, that is so specific to the English countryside is the rush to an outdoor tea when the weather is kind and we were served generously with freshly brewed tea and home-baked cake at a picnic table under the open-air garden shed at Phil and Janet’s home. Later we walked through the expansive fields surrounding their house to the place where Phil and Janet had discovered that an Osprey had built a nest on a pole very near their home. And indeed, there was an Osprey head poking from the nest. But even aided by binoculars, from my vantage it looked like the eraser on the end of a pencil. Still, it was exciting. The sudden rumble from the underbrush and the explosion of white-tailed deer that had been startled by our homeward bound conversation was very exciting indeed. As Phil told us some of the feudal history of the area I mused silently, “If I was one of those serfs I’d be thinking Lord Shithead could jolly well wait until I was good and ready to sow those rutted fields. Lordship my arse.”

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