As I write this, I am sat at a no doubt bacteria infested communal computer at work. A banana peel sits discarded in front of me, a plastic bag containing a sandwich box and bicycle lights is at my feet, and behind me the company fridge is humming and vibrating.
Outside, through thick, dirty windows, sits the trappings of industry - fuel tanks, water silos and the like - outlined against a partially blue sky in which geographic looking white and pale grey clouds float in cotton bliss.
Beyond the site are fields of kale, a couple of small streams, and a disused airfield. My dreams of escape soar like the buzzards I often see here, but unlike me the raptors are not confined by steel and glass, the rise in helixes upon the early autumn thermals. Pigeons fly about, presumably watching the buzzards with a wary eye.
Crows sit on the metal work outside the window, occasionally collared doves snuggle too. This time of year, there are pied wagtails everywhere, soon to move into their bustling winter roost in the lorry park, illuminated in the HGV lights like polluted little baubles in the shrubbery.
As the sun begins to set, barn owls quarter the waste ground with an eye to snaffling a young rabbit, who twitchy noses and all are found in great numbers here, undisturbed as they are by cat and dog. Linnets sit on the chain link fences, breeding red breasts beginning to fade. Soon the starlings will be murmurating over the stench of fast food outlets.
An egret struts the drainage ditch under the last large white butterflies of the year. It is never flushed aloft by the endless passing cars, but I find that merely looking at it from fifty metres away causes it to take to the air and laze off over the farmland.
How I envy it, and how I would go with it, if I were not trapped here in the land of daydreams.
Copyright cream crackered nature 22.09.14
No comments:
Post a Comment