It was getting light as I walked through the park...

It was getting light as I walked through the park. Two Border collies were rounding up the ducks while a woman in a sky blue anorak and bleached hair shouted at them to stop.

The man who has the look of a comedy vicar from the 1970s: bald head, buck teeth, glasses, was repairing a dry stone wall. He tried to wave as I drove past but couldn’t lift his arm because he was holding a large piece of stone.

The big woman with the grey regulation buzz-cut and the unusually large black plastic rimmed spectacles said “Oh no! No way! I don’t talk to her!” when I asked her whether she’d mind taking in a parcel for her neighbour. She let out her black labradors to bark at me through the wire fence that divided the gardens—rough lawns, rockeries and garden centre ornamentation. Eventually, a huge man of girth and height dressed for sport in brown boots, moleskins and a shooting vest, came out and loaded the dogs into an old metallic grey 4x4 and drove them away in the direction of the moor.

The crisp packet in the road wasn’t a pheasant as I’d thought, it was a crisp packet.

On the moor, I watched a crow seeing off a kestrel while Mr Anderson buzzed around his topiary armchair with a noisy hedge trimmer. On the edge of the wood I saw a jay and a bullfinch.

On the doorstep of the Old Manor House someone has arranged a small display of smooth grey pebbles with white stripes. Later, back in town I noticed Mrs Haigh has a large canvas print of some smooth grey pebbles with white stripes above the coal effect fire place and wood effect laminate floor.