16 years on.

Life out here  has settled into a quiet autumn rhythm. Most of the harvest is in but the spare part for the all singing all dancing cabbage picking/packaging machine is still missing. How long can it take to manufacture a replacement ? It goes without saying that the farmer is not happy. In the garden the salvias and the rose hips share the same cheerful red. Nature is still providing splashes of colour as everything else in the garden dies back. 

This morning there are four bees on the lavender beds. The lavender is getting long and stringy and in need of cutting back but we'll  wait until the last of the bees go before starting work. I thought the swallows had all left for Mauritania some time ago but there's twenty or so doing daredevil aerobatics over the potato sheds. The last of the birds to leave always provide us with this Cirque de soleil farewell. We stand and watch them as they dart around us. I'm convinced they love an audience and do this on purpose.

The arrival of 10,000 fresh faces into a small town with a population of 15,000 makes finding a table in a restaurant impossible. We try the new Mediterranean and the old standby Indian but both are already 'reservation only' by seven thirty. The fresh faces are also heading off in the other direction. The farmers eldest son headed back down to Edinburgh yesterday and daughter heads off to law school today. The youngest has two more weeks at home before Cambridge beckons. It only seems like yesterday that the World Cup was the pivotal point in life.

A quick detour to the bookstore. One of the staff is unpacking boxes and plonking their contents in piles on the floor. 

Three new recommendations to pick up. The 'American Overthrow' title has already sold out. They've saved the last copy for me. More are on order. The Sunak book sounds very worthy but you need to be in the right mood to face 550 pages on recent British politics. I know nothing about 'The City Without Jews' other than it's well written.

Written in the blog on this day 16 years ago a memory of a local farm lad. I wonder if the Royalton still exists on 44th Street and if it's lost its late 90's chic ? How time flies. The last line was true then and holds as true today :https://wilfanddigby.blogspot.com/2010/09/evil-mens-footprints.