The unconscionable challenges of the Barnvelder cockerel were incessant, this Morning, so that by 5:55 we turned around and agreed that we might as well get up. My awaking duty is to get the water on for the tea.

I might not have noticed, in my own Sleepy haze, that the Mist had settled across the valley, but the water needed a manual over-ride to replenish the uptake tank which is then filtered for consumption. When I stepped outside, the gentleness of the cool air, and the sense of life-enhancing moisture, filled my senses with delight; the rains are surely on their way.

That feeling of watery re-invigoration is a physical blessing to a parched body, and even though here in the north we’ve not had the drought so bad, new water from the sky will have the same effect on the dry ground. We’ll not be here to watch the grass grow again, this week, but by the time we return it’ll definitely be mowing duties.

The mist was even heavier when an hour later I returned to the water shed to remove the over-ride and let the system re-equilibrate, and it seemed I walked out into a cool paradise of a watery world. My head was, quite literally, in the clouds. But now the white disk of the sun is burning the mist away — the sleepy hamlet of Sparty Lea is revealed again to the onlooker.

These observations, direct experiences of the weather when it’s glorious, have been almost an unconscious part of what’s made our lives so wonderful, here on this high fellside. But it feels as if only now am I making appropriate time to reflect on what I’m walking through; our lives had been so busy for so long that we somehow passed into and out of the forest of joys without being aware of the trees, only the logistical effort to get to work.

Better late than never, I guess!