Monday, September 21, 2020

A new philosophy


Something about the light that tells you summer is coming to an end. The shadows longer, the colours softer. Sophie charges along the leaf filled drainage ditches - she loves the crunching noise they make when she ploughs through them.


On our morning walk we discover that not one but two tombstones had been vandalized. The stone mason has repaired one, the other still lies in two halves. In fact it lies in three parts. The base and body in the churchyard , the cross twenty metres down the lane on the other side of the churchyard wall. The churchyard is full. Angus wonders if this bout of vandalism is some scheme to free up space ?


Back at The Rickety Old Farmhouse Sophie takes up her position by the front door. This is the archetypical PON position. Nose out, rump in. From here she can monitor the passage of village life.


Most folks will be allowed to pass The Rickety Old Farmhouse unimpeded. Every so often an unsuspecting villager will saunter by only to be confronted by a vocal sheepdog standing on her hind legs at the front gate. Whistling or having shoes that make a 'click-clack' sound are dead certs to trigger this 'ferocious' guarding gene.


 From the BBC. The sound of dogs. Let's hope the link works. You'll need to click on at the 22 minute 15 second mark and keep listening for a minute or so.  Angus and New Blogger are still at the ' we speak different languages' stage of the relationship so this may not work : https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000mr9v

 This tweet and the subsequent thread are true philosophy for the lockdown era : https://twitter.com/MichaelPDeacon/status/1307651267506982914




7 comments:

Penny said...

Brilliant pic of clever killer guard dog who's element of surprise may be the pack of Dobermans and Alsations lurking behind.

suej said...

The sound of dogs worked beautifully - who would have believed the prawn crackers had such crunch!

Lisa in France said...

I hope they catch the villain who damaged the tombstones. You manage to have quite a lot of drama in such a small village. I enjoyed both links today - it was calming to read about someone else's nutty politics for a change. And perhaps the BBC would like to have a tape of Sophie plowing through the autumn leaves for next Sunday's program.

Taste of France said...

A French graveyard is never full. They put up lists of "expired" graves, and if the family want to keep the grave they have to pay up for a new lease. Otherwise, the old graves are dug up and recycled for somebody new. I don't know what they do with the gravestones. I was shocked to see this in our village. And I asked the guardian of a cemetery in town for the oldest grave, figuring it would be from 926 or something, and he informed me of the same, and so the oldest grave was from the late 1800s.
One broken grave could be a mishap in a late-night party gone too far. Two graves is intentional.

WFT Nobby said...

Excellent crunching sounds on todays post, and I love the pictures of Sophie safely monitoring village life. I too hope the headstone vandal is caught before they do further damage. Regarding the New Blogger, I find that a career involving mastering very complex geophysical software has given me at least one skill transferrable to life in retirement!
Cheers, Gail.

Yamini MacLean said...

Hari OM
Angus is mastering new blogger just fine... loved the crunch.

AS for the vandalism... two thoughts; something to do with the lawsuit disupte? OR, the tykes becoming more tykier??? One hopes its as innocent and easily explainable as that (and therefore resolvable). The thought that it might be the scarecrows'revenge at work just doesn't bear mentioning... YAM xx

Angus said...

I'd not thought of there being a link to the builder/anger management man dispute. I shall ask to see if either of the tombstones are part of the respective disputing clans. As to the village tykes. After the outcry following their phallocentric rearrangement of the mayor wifes dried marrow and gourd arrangements I think it safe to say they know the finger of blame will be pointed at them early on in any investigation.