Peace and harmony in our country idyll

Sounds you may hear in deep in the heart of rural Berkshire.

• A kind of grating scratching sound with a metallic edge. Like a dog with Steven Hawkins' speech aid, trying to bark: Pheasant.
• A barking cough with a monotonous, desperate note in it: Muntjac.*
• A thin high pitched tchick tchick, tchick tchick, tchick tchick, tchick tchick: I don't know, some kind of small bird.
• Just the other side of the hedge you're walking by, the sound of an old tramp with terminal pneumonia, lung cancer and chronic bronchitis coughing up a load of something unpleasant: Sheep, clearing it's throat.
• Somewhere in the distance, the moaning of a (large) soul in utter torment: A cow. (depending on the season and the time of day, she could be calling her calf, giving birth or in need of milking).
• A deep hoarse baying repeated whenever a car goes past:The dog up the road. (not the little shrill one or the jolly woofing one, the other one).
• A small creaky squawk close at hand: Tosca would like me to pay attention as she comes down from the top of cupboard.
• An assortment of sad, medium pitched mewing noises: Owls, buzzards, plovers or Mandu bringing home the bacon.
• An odd occasional scritching followed by long silences: Damn! Mandu brought the bacon home alive and let it go in the dining room.
• A deep soothing, surging murmur in the distance: The motorway.
• Something sharply reminiscent of a phone ringing, an alarm going off, a piece of slightly damaged machinery or a baby wailing, all needing urgent attention: A mimicking blackbird.

When Barney's aunt came to stay (from Dukinfield, near Manchester) she couldn't sleep for all the quietness.



On the other hand, or maybe I should say in the other ear, it's nice, now the evenings are getting lighter (stretching out?) to hear snatches of bird song as I drive home after work :)

*Muntjac: Japanese barking deer, imported to populate country parks, escaped and bred in large numbers. Now very common. Funny, stumpy, little creature with an odd stilted gait. Not very pretty!