70.

May 22nd.

Sound of tractors everywhere and the first cut of grass for silage or haylage. Kites arrive almost immediately..............uncanny. Stripes of yellow, grey and green, like bright bed covers, curve over hill and dip.

Serin, goldfinch, black cap, blackbird, sparrow and starling are the noisy bunch. Cuckoos in the early morning and dusky evening. A doe's bark in the hill copse.

Robert the noisy dog tribe owner is off too, with family, in another white camper van, for the Pentecote bank holiday and I`m left with relief at the quiet. I open the barn doors resolutely wide, scrub them and brush them free of wads and swags of cobwebs. Sunlight streams into the interior and I plan how it might one day be a little hideaway appartment, opening straight onto the wilderness. I'm lucky.

Sylvie and Bernard are quiet too in this heat. She has potted and repotted all her terrace plants and  planted out the tomatoes. Bernard has strimmed his dandelion lawn and the dust has settled in more stripes onto the damp window panes I've just washed.