All is calm, all is bright

On a two-coat, chilly December night, a John Lewis-Stempel and his labrador Plum venture out into the glass-hard air to check on the sheep and drink in the stars

- Philip Bannister

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.