The shade of trees

Fluorescent kitchen light and the dawn, softened by mist, in the garden set the two apart, as if from alternate realities. The residue of morning brew stuck to the glass made the division tangible, echoing the mist in an optical haze.

An early newspaper, as much for the walk as the news, took me across the green where the fences and hedges and ponies loomed slowly out of the fog, gaining colour and, it seemed, solidity with approaching steps, only to gently lose it over the shoulder. The first pony, cut first in silhouette, slowly resolved to a rainbow of browns; dark flanks, almost black tail and a mane that almost looked fresh from the colourist, with pale highlights amongst the chocolates. The colours spoke to the genetic hamster in me of ripe autumn nuts ready for winter storage.

With the mist there was, as always, a stillness reflected in the standing water. The only ripples raised by falling droplets from the mossy trees. An interesting reversal against the convention of sheltering trees; beneath their boughs was the only rain.

The still surfaces of pools reflected poorly, asthough they had their own coating of condensation. The surfaces were slightly oily, dusty; perhaps with the particles of slowly digesting leaves that have already given up the exercise of floating and have sunk to rest cold, on the mud.

The noise of an inaccessible aircraft rattled the air a little as my stroll turned back towards the ostensible objective. The engine note rose a little, fell, and then I thought I heard the whine of stage 1 flaps extending. I rather hoped that the pilot knew where he was. It was only with the loss of the aero-engine roar that I became aware of the birdscape. A few desultory twitterings raised above the ambience only for short robin disputes, but by the church there was an early practice for the starlings' spring - clicks and chatters and preludes in keys minor and major.