1 August 2007

I was late home after the performance and the party, which the worrying about dog and hens had compelled me to leave earlier than I would have liked to. The roads were blissfully empty most of the way back, and on arrival I headed straight for the Bouvier, who had spent a record number of hours by himself. My visions of psychological harm to his canine mind and physical harm to the furniture proved groundless as the good fluffy thing came up to me in his unfailing affectionate fashion, the only signs of any trauma being, if anything, a greater intensity of joy in welcoming me. He came out with me to check on the hens, who unforgivably had been left out at the mercy of every wild beast of the night until a late hour. They had come to no harm either, and as I shut their pophole I heard a screeching in the field indicative of some interesting creature. I brought the dog into the house for his dinner and once he had eaten I took him out to the field. A treat was in store.

In the chilly midnight the moon was burning the field with its silver light, giving it the look of one vast pagan temple dedicated to lunar worship. It was impossible not to remember Casta Diva che inargenti queste palle piante antiche…I didn’t need the torch; it would have been sacrilegious to intrude with a man-made light. I plodded over the uneven ground in the direction of the screech, by the river. When I reckoned I was in front of the sound’s source I put the torch on and shone it on the trees: it was an owl, perched on a horizontal branch. I hadn’t come this close to an owl before, but I had always thought owls made an ocarina-like hoot. And yet this was a strident, alarmed kind of screech, with a two-beat, iambic sort of rhythm. And the bird was definitely an owl. This owl was not amused to be glared by my torch and it showed his displeasure by releasing a dropping, audible and wet. And he held his ground, not budging from his branch, and the light did not inhibit him performing his screech with determination, not averting his round eyes from the glare of my torchlight. I observed it for a moment and then switched the torch off and went on my way round the silver temple the field had become. The murmur of the Rede sounded confidential, like an intimate talk or perhaps a prayer in propitiation of the moon. After a full circuit round the field it still seemed too soon to go back in, so the Bouvier and I went up the drive. Walking back, the moonlit was a blessed thing. If I hadn’t written mooncast I would do it all over again, but the result would be different up here from what I wrote in Coquetdale.