Today is a sort of day of reflection in the Church Year as well as a season of purple reflection, so to speak.
I returned to a childhood area after 71 years. Once this was always by cycle but now by car. Motoring down Lever Causeway passing Little Storeton village and then around the bend came Storeton Hall Farm. It was always well kept and the farm tenant had good husbandry. Fences were all well maintained and the farmyard was always kept immaculate. Hedges were trimmed regularly and field drains maintained. It was a mixed farm with a milking herd of Friesians, pigs, horses and a lot of the land was under plough. The Tack yard was always spruce and they had liveried horses so it was very popular with riders. It looked the same as I drove slowly past the farm. Turning into Storeton village at the back door of the farm I saw that the Tack yard was now a Vet Practice. I parked the car on the side of the narrow road and walked down the narrow lane towards Storeton Home Farm, passing the Keeper's cottage where we used to leave our bikes in the 1950's. Aongus Morrison, Head Keeper is long dead but I recalled fondly his tuition about wild life. We always learned from him and he taught us about flora and fauna and the ways of birds and animals. He always said we must always respect the tiniest of creatures for they are part of God's Plan for the world. He was a former stalker and ghillie on the Royal Estates in Scotland, hailing from Montrose. A piper to the Cameronian Rifles in WW1 he would often play for us if we requested. Once I asked him about being a piper in wartime. He didn't answer, but lifted the pipes and played Flowers of the Forest. The piobreachd floated across the fields in a haunting. I noticed that he had tears in his eyes but he never answered the question verbally, nor did he need to. We departed in silence for the fields and woods nearby. The memory still haunted me as I remembered him fondly. I walked on towards the Home Farm, once a poor farm indeed of 23 acres, a herd of a dozen milking Friesians and I recall old Mr Reid the farmer dying and his elderly, single daughter taking it on along with a somewhat surly farmhand. The farmland was not in good order. I think that she simply could not cope and the farmhand did the minimal required. Now the farmhouse looked brand new and was no longer a farm as the barn which I remembered well, was now a covered warehouse for farm machinery and stacks upon stacks of wall and roof tiles. Obviously it was now a thriving business, which was good. Cutting through the farm buildings I struck off across the home field to the closed causeway leading to Thornton Manor. Crossing it I aimed for Rake Hey Covert, remembering to enter not by the main ride stile but from the south side by the long grass and heavy old beech trees. Some of the beeches had fallen and were rotting. One I remember well was still there, much bigger. I recalled lying in the long grass here and watching the spitfires chasing ME109's high in the blue sky in dogfights, then after the planes departed hearing the skylark high in the sky singing his heart out. The trick was to spot him as he was so tiny. I didn't succeed often. Today though, no dogfights and sadly, no skylarks.
Walking carefully through the wood, taking care not to put up the wood pigeons with their alarm calls of flapping wings I settled down with my back against a big beech tree and just waited. After 20 minutes or so I heard a rustle, but it was only Billy Blackbird turning over leaves. He saw me and flew off with a chip, chip alarm call. Then another rustle and there was a hare lolling through the wood at a pace towards the bottom field with its clumps of marram grass to afford cover, as well as the dips and hollows there. I again recalled the Royal Rock Beagle Hunt meeting in Storeton village one Saturday and they arrived at Rake Hey whilst Vic and I were there. The Huntsman deployed the hounds to the edge of the covert where there is a ditch. They gave tongue and set off at a pace along the hedge bottom, the Master, Whipper-Ins and hunt followers on foot running behind. We thought that was curious as we knew about hares and they did not run along hedge bottoms and ditches. One hunt follower, a buxom teenage girl in bright red jodhpurs got her jodhpurs caught in the barbed wire fence. Being gentlemen we eased her out of the wire and she thanked us before running with difficulty after the hunt, now over a field away from us going downhill. We went in the opposite direction and walked to the top of the ridge away from the hunt and settled down to watch this fascinating escapade develop. Sure enough, along came the hare uphill towards us as hares have longer hind legs than forelegs and so always turn uphill. Now why didm;'t the Huntsman know that? As the hare approached we knelt down, arms outstretched and sure enough the hare ran into our open arms and we cuddled the frightened animal. Hare eyes are perfect for seeing to the side and backwards but they cannot see straight ahead and so our hare did not see us. We watched the hunt at a distance and we could see that hounds had lost the scent down the hill. Our hare soon calmed so we gently laid him down, stroked him and off he went at a walk first, then a dollop, away from the hunt. Later we spotted him about 100 yards away looking at us and washing his ears. We had to laugh.
Who says animals don't have feelings or don't know how to relate to us?
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