The Clerk in the Country

Friday 11th September 2020

A problem with an imaginary parachute

With the weather continuing to be mainly fine, tractors are hurrying through the village pulling trailers of grain, loads of bales or cultivation machinery, while the fields around are now a patchwork of standing crops, seed beds in preparation, or scatterings of huge round and rectangular bales.

It’s some years since these large bales, which can be moved efficiently by machine, mainly replaced the small, manually handled ones of my childhood.  More work may be involved for the adults, but for a 10-year old small bales have many uses as furniture, fortress walls and laboratories for the endlessly fascinating observation of insect life, not to mention all the reasons that can be found for climbing up the stack.  I remember once, after queuing excitedly along the “fuselage of a plane” on a friend’s farm, my imaginary parachute failed to open and my foot slipped into a gap between the lower tier of bales which formed our landing ground.  At least the heavy strapping on my ankle won me some admiring looks at school on Monday morning.

No blog next week because I will be on holiday, although any travelling will be as imaginary as my parachute.