5 August 2007

After the best part of another day toiling fruitlessly, finally towards the evening I found a way out of the deadlock in ‘Music and Land’. It doesn’t yet feel like a breakthrough, but the relief to see the music flowing again is no bad feeling.

Fluffy the Bouvier showed a rare semblance of vigilance when he barked from his watching post. The reason became apparent soon. The farmer, who had done some more work on our field yesterday, was back in his tractor, and behind him another machine, bigger still, followed into the field. They lost no time and began to work, one on each side of the field. The commotion was considerable and I was curious, so I went to have a look, leaving Fluffy in the house lest he run under the tractor’s spikes. It was an impressive sight to see two agricultural vehicles working in our land. Their weight set the ground vibrating underfoot and their roar sounded incongruous in this idyllic retreat, but at the same time it felt right to see the idle long grass gone and coming out of the rear of a round baler as neatly compressed bales. The thought that that hay is going to be used is good for the soul.

Seeing me standing there, the farmer came down from his tractor and explained that he wanted to make the most of the dry weather to press on with the job. I expressed concern that he was having to do this on a Sunday evening, but he didn’t seem to mind. Tiger the cat was sitting beside me, transfixed by the big machines. Her estranged colleague, Douglas, watched from a respectful distance, looking deeply concerned at the turn of events. I left the farmer and his assistant to their work and I came back to mine, which was now also making headway. Night has now fallen, but soon I’ll be going out with Fluffy to survey the transformation.

4 August 2007

I’ve hit a dead end at bar 135 of ‘Music and Land’, the second movement of the string quartet. I’ve been trying one solution after another since K went on tour three days ago, but nothing I come up with seems to provide a suitable continuation from this point, which also has to be a preparation for the movement to come to an end. Only my surroundings are keeping me sane.

On the way to the bins I bumped into M, a professional gardener and a friend of the last owners of our house. He was mowing the lawn on the other side of the road, the piece of land that has been retained by our predecessors. After some small talk about his gardening and our building works, I found myself telling him, without meaning to, about the full moon on the field. Rather personal perhaps, but I did give him an edited version that he might understand. He understood, and responded in kind with some or other of his own admiring experience of the beauty of these parts. This appreciation of the landscape did not surprise me. A couple of days ago I had also intimated something about the lunar experience with W, who, in turn, had told me about his days as a farmer, when in the summer he would rise at three in the morning and let the dogs run around in the moonlight. “You felt grateful to be alive” is the exact phrase W used. Notwithstanding his claims of inadequacy at self-expression, W not only uses language vividly, but he is a true aesthete. And today M the gardener didn’t fail to empathise either. I’ve come to the right sort of place.