February 2009

[Sweder]

It all looked pretty mild from my smug bedroom snug. Truth be told there was a vicious wind snarling in the hills, waiting to bite into bare flesh with spiteful relish. I plodded up to Blackcap, a dreadful, doleful scrape of a run, my slowest in recent memory. It was as if the constant stream of doom pouring from various electronic media had seeped into my muscles, weighing me down more than the most viscous lactic acid. I ploughed on, battling against the harsh blow, eyes streaming, tears ripped away across bleached-out sheep fields. Not even Alice Cooper could warm my cockles today.

Cresting the ridge of Mount Harry I received a visual slap across the face. There, for the next half mile or so, pegged out along the thicket's edge . . . an electric bloody fence! Temporary in nature - a combination of rusty metal spikes, white synthetic ribbon and a solitary strand of thick, charged wire - it cut a nasty gash across the scene, like a knife wound in a beloved painting. Outrage boiled; a blot on my landscape: Bloody farmers! This was no doubt deployed to keep the sheep out of the dense scrub, thus making the task of rounding them up a good deal easier/ cheaper/ more efficient. We all gotta make a living but stone me, what an ugly scar on these beautiful downs! Anarchic indignation raged, thoughts of wire cutters in the dead of night rising out of the red mist.

I'm sure there's a good reason for all this. Possibly, as the hills resound to the joyous bleating of newborn lambs, this will prevent one or two from falling into the ravenous maw of the chalk-pit, or maybe stop pregnant Ewes stumbling into trouble. I can't help but heave a huge sigh of resignation at our constant strain for 'modern improvement'. Nothing is sacred, no area of life free from the desecrating boot-print of progress.

I lumbered home, vitriolic bile swimming in my head. By the time I pulled up to the house, steaming, dripping sweat (turns out once the wind dropped it really was quite warm out) and utterly knackered, I no longer had stomach for the fight, choosing the lustful pleasures of a hot shower over the instant launch of barbed, yet ultimately toothless missives. Perhaps, when I'm back out there later in the week, I'll work up the head of steam needed to fire off a few scalding letters.

For now it's back to work, where the 'to do' list seems to have a life all its own.