Badger Shit . .

. . is everywhere every autumn. They leave their parents and go on their gap years and eat things like my mulberries and pears and lots of blackberries and they leave their little piles of purple shit in strategic marker piles-- like, this morning, a marked out row under my washing line. It's always full of seeds and don't smell too good. I am inclined to set a jet hose onto it so that it kind of melts into the grass.

Tonight was so still and warm that I sat out in the dark to try and see the tawny owls that set up their hootings the minute dusk falls, but they always go to distant fields when I go out. I reckon they can sense I'm out there. It was so quiet that all I could hear was the occasional leaf dropping from the rambling roses. In October!

The minute I come in I start to hear the badgers bumbling around outside. A nervous person would think they were burglars but I have taught myself never to be nervous. For example, an enormous crash that I heard outside a decade ago turned out to be badger demolition of bench and boulders. An enormous crash that I heard downstairs the other night would have scared any lesser girl, but I am philosophical, and in the morning I saw that it was my handbag, full of filofax, etc., that had fallen off the car manual. Now the car manual is a very sloping item. I had been consulting it to find out how to stop the damned seat belt from ringing its head off every time I go up the lane. Damned low IQ thing. Who needs a seat belt in their own lane? It should know that I'll put it on when I get to the road, but it's too thick.