Littlest didn't fall in ...

Overheard this brief conversation in the grounds of a National Trust house today:

"Eurgh! Get them down! They'll be all covered in rat dust!"

Said a mother, walking round a nature trail, in six inch heels, designer jeans and a cropped linen jacket, as she watched her sons climb onto a bale of straw.

What is rat dust? Toxic dander shed by rodents? Poisonous rat hairs just waiting to pierce their soft, young flesh and rot it from the inside out? What films has she been watching? What possible harm does she think playing in a field will do to her two little boys?And what if a passing rat did sniff around the same corner of rural England yesterday, a little bit of dirt and 'rat dust' is not normally harmful - and there are probably more rats per square inch of her urban home (it must have been urban - no-one born and bred in the country would wear those clothes to go for a walk, or worry about dirt and boys, or teeter pathetically at the edge of the path as though the long grass in the field would swallow her up if she ventured across it).

I wanted to creep up to those boys, find them a muddy puddle, collect leaves and feathers, get gloriously filthy and encourage them to jump in the moat - but the last might actually have held a genuinely dangerous ratty problem - Weil's disease. So instead, I watched my own children as they found dead rabbits, petted horses, watched dragonflies, climbed on the straw bales and ran through the long grass.

But, even I have to admit that briefly, my heart was in my mouth as Littlest danced too near to the moat.

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Colour, Delacroix, flochetage and why don't we all have a go at inventing words

Yes - it is a real word. Flochetage. Well, a real-ish word. One invented by the painter Delacroix, when he found the dictionary cupboard bare and required a word to describe his technique of layering different coloured paints, using lightly pulled brush strokes to create texture and pattern and thereby enhance his base-layer colours (... lost? - stick around, read on and all will become clear. Or perhaps muddier ...). Flochetage implies both stringiness and threadiness. Apparently. And it sounds good - in a filling-the-mouth-with-sound sort of a way. Try it ... flochetaaaage. Not that I speak French. So I am probably mis-pronouncing it. Nor am I an artist. So what do I know about painting techniques - except that I think this one works. What I do like is the concept - you invent a new technique in whatever it is you do, hunt around for the vocabulary to describe it, find the dictionary is lacking, so make up a word of your own and announce to the world what it means. Delacroix isn&#

Curlews, summer skies and walking in circles.

Summer skies over the Yorkshire Dales and my mind is set to rest mode. But that rest is not totally restful; there is a niggle ... a memory, a hint of childhood, something that unsettles slightly - a light brush stroke of discomfort; a gossamer breath of discombobulation and a 'Woah! Wait a moment!' moment of 'that's-not-right!' - we're about as far from the sea as it is possible to be in middle Britain and yet, I can hear the distinctive Peep! Peep! of oystercatchers and the piercing cry of curlew. Here - in the blue skies of the North Yorkshire dales and along the footpaths - and above the endless miles of drystone walls are birds that should be at the coast. Oystercatchers, with their distinctive red pliers attached to their heads feed on - you've guessed it - oyster beds. All along the coastline of the British Isles, their distinctive cry is the call of summer. Drowned out somewhat by the banter of seagulls but sharp and

My beloved boy, how lucky I have been

It's an odd thing that when we are waiting for someone to die ... and I say someone here even though the one in question was a dog - but to us he had character and a place forever in our hearts and was more of a familiar someone than some of the people in our lives. So, I'll start again - it's an odd thing that when we are waiting for someone to die, our senses go into overdrive. We notice things that normally would be part of the background of our every day. We breathe more - or rather, we don't but what we do is notice our breathing more, as we watch his. We pause. We think. We listen to ourselves and our inner voices speak. Memories flood our dreams ... though sleep is fitful. Why am I telling you this? ... ... we lost this beautiful boy today And in the hours before he went, I saw perfect spheres of dew on blades of grass - little orbs holding micro-images of our world; a bumble bee drunk on nectar, yellow-dusted with pollen, resting in a crocus; ten - yes, ten!

Walking The Dog

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