Thursday 28 January 2010

Stripping, Northumberland style

15st 8lb, 8.0 units. I should have been driving back to Cheshire first thing this morning, but then I received a phone call on Monday to say that an old friend had passed away over the weekend and his funeral would be taking place on Saturday afternoon, so I decided to hang around for that. I sat down at my desk early this morning, intent on making the best possible use of my additional time in Northumberland to clear up some of the mountains of accumulated newspapers, periodicals and correspondence that have grown up around the place over the last year. And I did a little of that, but all too soon allowed myself to become distracted into aimless searches for things I did not really need. Towards the close of the day, I walked to the post box with The Dog and observed one of those signs of a really harsh winter that I had first noticed when walking across the fields on Sunday: a pheasant carcase stripped so comprehensively bare that it comprised only the beak, backbone and feet, plus a few, scattered tail feathers. Later on I came across a sheep that had received similar treatment. Further out in the high hills, there could well be people …

 
A very ex-pheasant
 

A profoundly former sheep
 

Alas, poor Sean ...

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