It’s a deeply golden morning, the sun diffused through the softest wisps of cloud. A breeze is ruffling the heads of the willows in the village, turning their leaves now green, now silver-white.
The dogs and I are walking down Banbury lane, beneath trees at their most thickly green. Pants is flinching and dancing on his lead: above our heads , two squirrels are in carnival mood, chasing each other from branch to branch, from oak to ash, flitting along impossible paths. The tarmac of the road is dappled by sunlight. The dapples slide over my arms, my shoulders, briefly warm my hair. The air smells of wood smoke and change.
The stems of the nettles are blackening, the leaves fading to yellow round the edges. There’s a sprawling blackthorn beside the oak, heavy with unripe sloes. They’re a smudged purple, yet to darken, and make me think of gin and stickiness and good times.
We reach the little brick bridge over the Sor, and we turn right, beneath the spreading arms of the oak. I bend to free the dogs from their leads – they’re off, squirrel-induced rockets – and then step through into the field-below-the-dryer. I can feel the heat of the field on my bare knees, earth that’s had its stubble raked, its underside turned uppermost. New people are to farm the land, and the thought unsettles me. I know these fields so deeply, their rhythms, how the rain collects and flows, the muddy bits, the dry bits, where the elderberries grow. I’m afraid they might change.
This has been a hard year. Frustrating, full of unrelenting pressure and the sense that dreams should be grown out of and put away. Cowardice has stopped me writing, that and a sour sort of laziness, a self indulgent sulk with the world. I’ve martyred myself to housework and money-work, mopping and cooking and typing, producing immaculate accounts in bright folders, baking cakes and ironing shirts, all the while dying inside.
September has always been my time for new starts, new pencils, and these last few days I’ve found myself again, in amongst the crumpled beach towels and empty sun creams. Failure doesn’t seem to hurt as much now, my pride isn’t quite so flatly squished.
I stand beneath the oak, looking out at the field. The new farmers haven’t marked the footpath yet, the field is untrodden. Its hedges are newly-shorn, the margin reduced by half. It’s the same but different; there’s a faint tension, a hum in the air that vanishes when you try to listen.
The field is waiting, like me, to see what’s going to happen.
For Paul Rogers. In gratitude.
Carlie Lee 
“the sense that dreams should be grown out of and put away” —— NEVER!!!!!
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