IN the Bible, shepherds watched their Christmas flocks by night, while seated on the ground. In the winters of medieval Britain, shepherds crouched in convenient, weather-proof shrubbery (hence Shepherd's Bush'). The modern English shepherd in December tends to haul him or herself off the sofa for a quick late-evening check of their charges. So, coming up to 9pm yesterday evening, I put on a head torch and the Barbour, went outside, grimaced at the cold, went back into the hall, put a gilet on top of the Barbour. It was two-coat cold. Only a single dog, my labrador Plum, could be budged from in front of the fire, but, then, she is my shadow.
It was one of those December silent nights when the air is pure and glass-hard when the stars are so close they can be held in the hand. There was no need for the head torch: although the slow-rising moon was netted by the scrawny branches of the hedge, the land was lit by a million stars and the gently rolling fields were silver-plated as far as I could see. The black dog's back sheened with stars in the night's quiet broken only by the sound of a tractor grinding its way up the lane on the other side of the valley and her wicking of a tawny owl down in the dark wood.
Esta historia es de la edición December 15 - 22, 2021 (Double Issue) de Country Life UK.
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Esta historia es de la edición December 15 - 22, 2021 (Double Issue) de Country Life UK.
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Save our family farms
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A very good dog
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Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
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After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
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