The closing days of Autumn

Faced with a raw and elemental Cornwall, Olley has taken a wise option and selected a sunny window sill until conditions have improved to the extent to be suitable for a cat. Day after day recently the gales have torn at the land and tossed the sea into a foaming frenzy and day after day Olly has slept - contentedly soundly, dedicated - a one cat mission to shut out the world. A world that has not been our gently tranquil parish but a snarling moaning torrent of noise always at the edge of our hearing - the pulsating beat of the sea from below the village, the steady hum of the wind in the phone lines and the thrashing of a thousand branches dancing in the hedgerows.




Yet still we have constants in our days - the Robin that visited the stables throughout the summer bearing Oats and Barley carelessly discarded by the horses back to his brood conveniently positioned just beside the stable entrance gate. Day after day hour after hour - the frenzied workload of the tiny aviator flitting into the bay tree to be rewarded by a burst of cheeping that brought to mind the rapturous applause of a theatre audience. Now that Autumn is fading he still darts in and out of the stables on his own personal mission to populate the world with plump Christmas robins.



And in the house cocooned in the blissful silent peace of the three foot thick walls I cheered myself up within the first Hyacinths of spring on the stairs windows sill to sweetly perfume our journeys to and through without overpowering our consciousness.

And in the garden the Banana tree that was almost given up for dead after last winter when it was destroyed to the ground. Well today it has sprouted again after a cosseting mulch of Sooty's best discarded bedding and dose of extreme neglect for the Summer - so a gardeners hopes spring eternal and Olley is waiting until Spring!