Bog Myrtle & Peat

Autumn is a fruit machine, and mostly when you pull the arm it comes up “pinkfoot geese”. They’re everywhere above the brightened trees, and they sound like winter. Beneath them, wigeon squeal like babies on the foreshore, and the hedge is dense with redwings. Every one’s a winner, but pull the arm often enough and there’s a chance that you’ll land on a jackpot.

Your best bet is after hours, when all the other players have gone home. You take one more pull of the arm for the road and suddenly you can hear swans. Forget the grumpy growl of a mute swan, or the pounding wheeze of white wings at the canal. These are whooper swans, falling like cold winds from the far north.

You’d be staggered by these birds in broad daylight – the long, laden lines of seventy or a hundred at a time. Stop the tractor and watch them catching sun which might otherwise have fallen several miles away. There’s almost nothing greater than a glimpse of swans in chains in the autumn sky; it can almost trump every other outcome at this casino.

Almost, because sometimes you also get the rollover. That comes when you lie in bed at night and the window’s open to low cloud or the rising bag of a moon – suddenly darkness hums to the sound of swans in the starlight like a sea-song in the shutters; a finger on the rim of the finest glass. At times like these, there’s no need to see a single feather. Hearing them, you simply know you’ve won it big, and just like any seasoned gambler will tell you, “only losers say it’s just a game“.