Chasing shadows up on the roof

Posted on August 27, 2018

It’s ‘heather’ time on Exmoor, mid to late August, and the stags are in full, soft velvet before it imminently sheds, to reveal their battle amour and the abruptly hard new-season antlers in preparation for the autumn rut.

Rut, rut, rutting. It can be a fractious and emotional time as the new flood of hormones kick in and the survival of the fittest battles take place; it is also a difficult time to photograph the rituals with the testosterone fuelled stags getting a bit feisty and action happening over a large area. But,

before the mayhem, here is the calm. An afternoon of essential contentment of futile wandering © , chasing shadows and just enjoying the fresh breath of air of being out of the irritation of the crockle infestation that plagues us at this time of year.

Seriously though, it’s no wonder that ‘the M25 is permanently blocked due to accidents’, every-time I drive out some incompetent retard tries to kill me with inept driving. I’m not talking about indicator use, (we have no-indicator-day every Friday in Barnstaple), or pulling out in front of you then dawdling along at an unhurried ‘direckly’ pace, (like most farmers and granddads do), or even mobile phone use, middle of the road driving, inability to reverse, roundabout discipline, overtaking into on coming traffic – the list goes on… It’s the attitude. The sense of entitlement and arrogance and belittlement of local people just coz they got a ‘agricultural’ way of speaking and living; dont mean to say they is all thick (fick).

Of course I know that not every visitor is like this, and for every one ‘Dick’ there are 99 wonderful, respectful, take-your-litter-home travellers, who come to North Devon for the same reasons we live here: Space and time. Space to breathe and time to think. Away from the horde and it’s crippling atmosphere of antagonism. Also not every north devon resident is a open-thinking internationalist who wants to live in a co-operative of common sense.

Back in the day, holidaymakers were so out of their depth that we could do nothing but laugh: At the wetsuits on back to front, sitting on the beach in the rain and so ‘fish out of water’ innocent attitude. Which to be fair was endearing, In those days we could put up with this behaviour because it was only for six weeks, and it was a prime generator of wealth for the economy of a small village.

Now the foul manic lifestyles of the brexit generation have collided with our ‘chilled-out’ wholesome organic way of existing. Where is the love?

You can always find it on top of the roof, where there are big skies and no small minds (apart from the sheep)..