May 2014

[Sweder]

Another average run to report. Gloomy skies heavy with impending rain, a stiff breeze, rain-soaked turf ... perfect conditions for a mid-morning jaunt. I switched on my ears to build my own soundtrack. Here's what I picked up.

- The rustling of hedgerows ravaged by the wind racing up out of the town to cavort, free at last, across the hills
- protesting sheep, jeering and bleating like back-benchers at PMQs
- the clatter of just-disturbed wood pigeons taking off from dense woodland. Take a brown paper bag, scrunch it up, pull it out flat. Repeat at high speed: that's the sound
- rain: gentle at first, the lightest pitter-patter on my wind-cheater, getting heavier by the minute
- the rising collumph- collumph- of Ripley and Murphy galloping up behind and then past me, tails twirling
- entering the woodland, beating rain magnified off a thousand bowing leaves
- that rain-sound lightened a hundred times as we emerge onto open grass-land under brightening skies
- the swish! Swish! of tall, wet grass as I stride through it
- rope tightening: the sound of my gluteus maximus contracting as I hit the wet-marble slickness of the rugged, flint-strewn bridleway
- the crackle of damaged alveoli as I reach the 'safety' of flat, wet mud, and exhale ...
- the swell of soaring Skylarks, tweeting as one as they ascend through the low, scudding cloud

And more. So much more. Just think what I'd have missed with headphones rammed in my lug-holes. So much aural pleasure, such rich reward for a simple, modest plod.