Thursday 23 May 2013

This little piggy....

A quick jaunt yesterday, with friends, to a charity bring-and-buy book sale held in a private 16th century house, which also has b&b facilities. It was really charming - filled with oak beams, antique furniture, patterned crockery and all the other individual, homely touches that sum up comfortable English country style. Biscuits (including wafer-thin, heart-shaped shortbread) and cakes, all home-made, with tea and coffee served in proper cups and saucers, made for a very genteel and self-indulgent half hour. I spent as much time admiring the house as looking at books, but I contributed to a very good cause by donating three books and coming home with seven...so much for de-cluttering! Amongst those I bought was a book called Fopdoodle and Salmagundi, a book of 'words and meanings from Dr Johnson's Dictionary that time forgot'.

It was a bit of a dull day, but the journey home was brightened by the fields of oilseed rape looming on the horizon, and glimpsed between the trees. The smell of the stuff is quite distinctively musty. I don't find it unbearably unpleasant - but it does make me think of suitcases full of ancient clothes that desperately need to be freshened up, and preferably without too much close examination beforehand! Some hate the colour, but I love the almost artificial brightness of it, and every year plan to paint it. Perhaps this is the year!


Then we spotted an unusual sight - a little family of around a dozen little black piglets, out with mum, snuffling around in a field dotted with dandelions.


As the runaways (for that's what they were) got nearer to the road we (with our city ways!) were mightily relieved when two locals took charge by phoning the farmer and ushering the whole lot back home - the little black piggies scattering like marbles every so often before scurrying back to catch up with mum. Very sweet!

So now I must make sure I don't have an erke (adj. Idle; lazy; slothful) day and get to it... Blue skies, strong winds and sunshine today - perhaps I need to go and get some more inspirational pictures of yellow fields!

2 comments:

Helen Hallows said...

Or you could paint your lounge oilseed rape yellow! Get C on to it! X

Else said...

Uurrgh.... imagine! Oh, wait - I don't have to..!