So what shall I write about in this blocked state? Is it that I’ve too many thoughts as Mopsa suggests? Yes, I think perhaps it is; my mind is a constant tombola churning around ideas and dreams.

Or is it boredom as Wordworm poses? Yes, I think it could be; after all there are only so many seasons in a year, so many calvings and lambings one can write about, only so many times you can mention the weather or lack of it. Years go through the same cycles and in farming you are very conscious of this. I know I find something new every day…but sometimes that newness is just mine – the bit I need to hold onto for myself. To me, these small excitements make the differences and exceptions to a repetitive world, but to others I suspect they will often be mundane.

the baby deer skull - recognisable by the zigzag sutures connecting the plates

I was out walking with the dogs. I went the long way hoping to catch a glimpse of the hinds with their baby calves (which I did); it’s also the route which brings me through to the small hidden meadow where I ‘saw’ Jilly running towards me on the six month anniversary of her death. And there Ness very carefully and very gently laid something down at my feet. It was the fresh skull of a baby deer. Painfully newborn in the sutures connecting the plates and extraordinarily vulnerable in the unformed, almost deformed, structure of its unfinishedness.

It was at once gruesome, but also, in some macabre way, compelling. Why, I’m not sure. Possibly both the hope of new life and hopelessness of early death.

there was something compelling about the baby skull, though also macabre

Returning home across Hannaborough the purple moor grass was twinkling with trembling crystal-clear rain drops captured in the webs of attacking spiders. Again, the confusion of beauty with horror.

crystal-clear raindrops caught in a web

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