A night time (90 days to go…)
by Max Akroyd
It’s just before midnight. Everybody in this house is sleeping apart from me.
I’m listening to that strange east wind scouring the darkness. When we first arrived here the space was so big it felt like we were simply cast adrift. Even now, at night, the hinterland of the farm seems vast in my imagination. I try and compress it within the bounds of my mind’s eye but in the gloom it escapes my grasp. Instead I think of a remote, reverse world beyond the window teeming with night creatures, the boundaries of the daylight hours now porous, meaningless.
I fix on my farm animals and wonder what their experience of night might be like. No doubt the pigs will be oblivious, snug like broad beans in their straw nests. An enviable kind of composite, snoring warmth. I’m not sure about the goats – they are a bit tense at the best of times and I fear the long night might be a bit of an ordeal for them.
Of all the birds, I’m absolutely certain about the nocturnal status of one of them. The oldest of the female ducks will be perched upon the apex of the old barn. By day, you’ll find her in the enclosure, hanging around the drinker with the other ducks. But without fail, around dusk, she’ll use those unclipped to wings to take flight and adopt her lonely position. Not for her the questionable ratio of safety in numbers. She forgoes the proximity of her kind when the fear fox is about, just to be certain of the new dawn.
She’s up there like a living sign. The duck and I will be awake a while yet.
Evening Max
You are at it again. Waxing lyrical.I will be picturing you wandering around your land with a frayed straw hat on,no shoes,shirt half tucked in, tatty trousers with braces and carrying a flagon of mead!
Methinks you should not spend too much time on your own in the middle of the night.
Mary x
Hi Mary,
It might just be me but that sounds like a pretty cool get up you’re describing… aspirational dressing!
I agree, by the way, nights are for sleeping in. Just cant persuade my head of that sometimes.
Oh dear Max suddenly there are only 90 days more. The prospect of checking emails without the magic of your blogs makes me feel – more like the goats than the pigs!
Thanks as ever Peter,
And the blog won’t be stopping in 90 days after all. I like it here and will keep on writing until the job is done.
Lovely post… I had a similar but somewhat inversed experience a while back, when I went for a walk in the field under a full moon, and found myself looking back at our house and the village imagining the night animals’ perspective on us in our houses and bright street lights. It felt so strange and liminal, and also made me think of medieval French literature when villages were mere pockets of civilization isolated by vast stretches of wild forest where anything was possible.
Hi Laura –
Lovely comment… I think the French derive a lot of confidence and security from the vastness of their country. Can’t help thinking wilderness is good for the psyche, somehow.
Forest, though, is different again, as you say. I’d like to write a post about that one day.
It can be magical that lonesomeness in the dark of the night. Each of us in our own cocoon of velvet blackness, that we choose to illuminate ours and wax lyrical while the animals slumber on sets us apart.
They aren’t ‘bog-eyed’ and short-tempered the next day, they have had the requisite hours sleep and we have to drag our poor farmers bodies around feeding the rested, bright eyed and bushy tailed ones, cursing under our breath about our folly of the night before.
(The thought of your duck so desperate to keep safe from the fox is a good one, it shows a commonsense on her part and a memory of past events.)
Sue xx
Hello Sue,
Nothing as annoying as a hale and hearty pig if you’re feeling the opposite!
Somebody once explained to me why a pig could never achieve enlightenment. I can’t remember what they said, though! They seem the embodiment of zen calm to me. A bit on the greedy side perhaps ; )
I share your respect for the duck’s attributes.