Bog Myrtle & Peat

There were tall clouds and flags of shadow in the sunshine, and I wondered how it was possible that anything could fester in the sudden amber light. September’s a fine time to be alive if only you can ignore the flies at work, and the maggots boiling blackly in the fleeces.

Now there’s a conflicted image; the year brought to a moaning climax of berries and fat young flesh – all its “mellow fruitfulness” foaming at the lip with the sickle descending upon it. But with the first cut, you realise the apple’s core is black; there’s moth in the rug and everything you hoped to gather’s been spoiled, like a stain which leaches through the decent brightness of a shroud.

The maggots worked as they do, and the sheep I hoped to keep were killed in the end. The vet did everything she could, but even as we chased the flystrike off, more appeared elsewhere until the ewes were sloughed and crumbling. I held my hopes to a lamb from this year and gave her everything I had. She seemed to rally, but more strikes followed and in the end she was wild-eyed and incoherent, tired of playing the sheep and desperate for a change. That’s no fair finish for any creature, and it’s thin consolation to learn that my neighbours suffered worse than I did in the endlessly balmy smile of a cosy autumn.

I see there’s a sudden baulk in the hill-grass these last few days. The cattle are catching up with it, and that’s a sure sign of a new season. But I also know there are many weeks still to roll before the frost comes and kills the flies to relieve the pressure and free the sheep again. In the meantime, the dead crop lies ripening on its back; three swollen bellies at the tone and tensity of fattening swedes.