After north Cornwall I came to the Test Valley, I think. That is what it says on the council vans anyhow. An immensely kind family lent me an immense cottage in farmland a mile outside a village.
I’ve started new drugs costing the French taxpayer €4,000 a month. Possible side effects are thrush and fatigue. No thrush so far but fatigue yes, and I remained several days within these cottage walls before I tried to walk to the village pub for lunch.
Walking was easier than I thought it would be and I diverted up a footpath that followed the edge of a huge field up to a viewpoint. Snowy hawthorn was the one vibrant colour in a panorama of leafless trees and hedges and muddy acres. The sky in contrast was a vivid, fast-moving drama of black, blue and white.
After a month or two someone rang him up and offered him £14,000 for his place on the waiting list
Quartering the sloping field on which I stood was a red kite. Every other red kite I have seen has fled at its first sight of me. This one soared and glided across for a closer look. I think its predatory mind had spotted something in my gait betraying a fatal weakness. It circled lower and lower, as it sized me up for a Serengeti-sized meal, until it was not ten yards above my head. Blimey, I thought, as I backed nervously into the shelter of a hawthorn bush. What must eastern Ukraine be like?
The village was all flint, thatch, daffodils and 4X4s. Partridges were relaxing on the village green. It was a cover photograph of an ‘Our Lovely English Villages’ calendar. The pub was old, thatched and crooked with about half a million quid’s worth of cars parked in front.
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