“In war, there are no unwounded soldiers.”

Jose Narosky

There can be little doubt that war changes a soldiers vision of the world, for ever. Sometimes with devastating effect.

And some wounds of war are more visible others, the Shellshock of the World War I straddled the physical and the psychological (the film clip is disturbing, the music beautiful) nothing is ever perceived in quite the same way again.

Anecdotally, from a lady now well in her eighties, talking about her friends husband, coming home from a Japanese prisoner of war camp

He was never the same again, nightmares, nightmares every night; he used wake screaming and sweating. They used to have to dose him with brandy; to calm him. Terrible. Terrible.  You know, he died young? In the 1950’s, cancer of the oesophagus.

It’s only since the 1980’s that this would be called Post traumatic stress disorder, but it doesn’t really matter what you call it the effects are just the same.

(I’d forgotten I’d written this post; we shouldn’t forget.)

I’ve been tied up all week, the blog has been neglected and I’ve been tetchy for lack of me time; sunrises have teased, the sun peeping out for no more than a handful of minutes before disappearing  behind a curtain of cloud. In what little time I could snatch I couldn’t even convince the  giggly grouse

to play ball

It’s been a week of contrasts, the funny, the sad, the fantastic and the frustrating, the ugly and the beautiful; jaw dropping moments that perplex and perturb, juxtaposed with air punching YES! moments.

So tonight, I’m closing the door and lighting the fire, a bottle of wine and a curry* are calling me.

(*But only if I remember to get the chicken out of the freezer.)

People tell me Springer Spaniels are ‘all weather dogs’ ready for the off what ever the conditions. But when I opened the door this morning to let Spud out for a pee, he took one look at the raging storm and sat his bum down firmly on the door mat and shot me a ‘I’m not going out in that!’ sort of look.

It was lashing with rain and blowing a gale and not weather to turn a dog out in; but on the wind I could hear a mans voice, shouting; I couldn’t pick out the words. I called Tom in for a second opinion, yes, he could hear it too, we decided none of their neighbours would be out for leisure or pleasure in such weather conditions, so who was it? Well it could have been a fellrunner or a walker, after all  Mr Uhdd was out, competing in a race (it’s what we expect of him what ever the weather). We decide to investigate, what if someone was lying in a crumpled heap at the foot of the stile and we’d simply shut the door on them? Tom pulled his dressing gown tight and announced he would get the binoculars and look from the bedroom window, whilst I donned my little red Welly boots and full waterproofs and set off down the field.

From the bottom of our field I could see what the problem was, a couple of fields away a neighbouring farmer was trying to get his Border Collie to round up the sheep, it was far more interested in staying in the back of the Landrover out of the rain and wind than it was rounding up sheep, very sensible dogs, very sensible, I trudged back up the field. A little while later it wasn’t just my dripping coat that made a puddle on the kitchen floor.

The storm knocked off the remaining leaves from the trees, it’s just the smoke bush in the garden that is hanging on to it’s glorious colour.

Hands up who wanted to see the mummified bat?  Well here it is, with a sewing thimble to give you an idea of the scale. He/she looks as if they are sleeping peacefully, the bones are so tiny and delicate, is that the pelvis, bottom left?

As it’s Halloween and we’ve covered the origin of the festival before, I’ll continue with a ghoulish themed post, below a bird I found in my mums garden, it was only when I set it up at home to take the photograph and I looked at it through the long lens that I could see maggoty things emerging from it, yuk, I really should wear my glass more often.

Tom was mystified with my little collection  skin of bones, ‘Why Mum? Why?’ he asked. I can only think it goes back to my school days I loved ‘nature walks’ and collecting ‘things’ and at secondary school we had an art teacher with a fine collection of animal skulls for still-life drawing (or should it have been still-death?) I’m not sure what animal this one is from, but if you want to do some research, start here.

One of my favourite photographs  by my favourite photographer, Murdo McCleod  features a ravens skull and Roy Kean 

And I mustn’t forget the frog or is it a toad? It can be best describes as desiccated, we found in a bucket of sand.

There I think that is every ‘body’, Oh no, I forgot, there’s the little moles bones way back on this blog. Hummm, oh dear, I can think of a couple more, but I think this is enough for one evening.

This time last year we were holed up in Wasdale, I’ve been hankering after the place, although there is nowt wrong with here you understand, it’s just I’d like the freedom from ‘stuff’ that comes with going away for a few days, at home you can never quite escape the chores, the niggling phone calls and the omnipresence of unfinished tasks.

We’ve been out walking today, under leaden skies,

it blew away the cobwebs and I found a very nice gate post for my collection

This hillside was once a busy place, a large quarry, but now a stile on a footpath will suffice and the gate post has simply been walled in. (Although it must have been turned through 90 degrees at some point, do you think?)

I’ll get up there again sometime when the weather is a bit brighter, there are lots of photogenic lumps of rock and the remains of buildings that tell the industrial archaeology of the quarry.

The bracken is looking bonnie

And the colours would sing with a dash of sun on them.

Another day; Spud wont object he had a ball.

Only neglected by way of not appearing on this blog of late, due the puppy-photo- fest that has been running. You couldn’t neglect them if you tried, they’d be hammering on the door and climbing in through the cat flap if you failed to tend to their needs.

When we got back from our summer holidays, we added to the flock, 4 new chucks, 2 of the coveted Bluebells and 2 dependable Warrens

We bought them ‘at point of lay’

And they are now churning out eggs at a rate that requires spasmodic cake baking to keep pace (not to mention a few fried egg butties.)

No photos of Spud today, he is in the doghouse and the cost of the dry-cleaning bill is coming out of his squeaky toy budget: duvet, down, double, need I say more?

Early one morning. Fields, houses and the English village essentials, the cricket pitch and football pitch.

The puffs of smoke from the chimney in the photo below, are from the tunnel of a railway line that burrows it’s way through the hillside.

I’d never thought of flotsam and jetsam as being ‘seasonal’ like vegetables, but our beach finds were different to the summer collection.

Sweet chestnut husks, tossed in seaweed.

Acorns, served on a bed of black seaweed, with brine dressing

Oh…. seeing this image, has reminded me that I brought this seaweed oddity home with me; I hung in a poly bag in the hall, out of the reach of Spud, I think I’d better investigate, or it will be like the maggoty time we put the crab lines away with the bait still attached all over again.

I’m not sure what it is but I think it will sit happily amongst my curiosity collection.

As we entered the village on our way home from Devon, the trip meter on the car was showing 599.01m Tom was insistent that if it hadn’t turned over to 600m by the time we got home I would have to drive up and down the yard till it did so, to my relief it rolled over to 600m as I swung the car into the drive and I got straight to the kettle. Home.

We didn’t take Spud down to Devon with us,  we stayed overnight with friends and we felt some of his puppy ways were a bit unreasonable to foist upon them (or more accurately, their carpets!)

We missed him, we know he would have loved to charge along the beach

There were a few dogs around, perhaps not surprisingly we spotted a Springer Spaniel having loads of un; it’s a bit like when you buy a new cars, suddenly the roads seem full of the same make and model, we keep seeing Springer’s everywhere. This is not Spud, but it looks like him, don’t you think.

Spud spent a couple of nights back at the kennels where we was bred, he found a new friend in a similar aged labradoodle pup.

Knowing we’d be unable to get back in time to pick him up from the kennels, our neighbour kindly picked him up for us and dropped him off at home, in the kitchen, an hour or so before we were due back, the plan worked a like a dream; however it could have gone pear-shaped, as I’d  thoughtlessly left the inner cat flap set  to ‘outwards,’ so when the boys and I got home a very excited Spud was running the wall of death around the utility room having squeezed  through the cat flap from the kitchen, if he’d have managed a bit of ‘joined up thinking’ he would have realised he could also get through the cat flap in the back door and out into the big wide world, for a proper adventure.