I walked to the top of the hill in the late afternoon sunshine today. The air was hot and close, as if a storm was coming, but the sky was blue and white and at the top of the hill I sat for a while amongst the silver birch saplings, eating the handful of wild raspberries and blackberries I’d gathered on my way up. Silence, but for the soft breathing of leaves and the musical conversation of a pair of wood pigeons. I closed my eyes and let the stillness sink down into me.

On the way back down the hill I passed a family going for an evening walk of their own. She rode like a faery queen loose-reined on a speckled grey horse with huge white-feathered hooves. He walked beside with a black long-legged puppy that bounded eagerly around his feet and the horse’s slow hoofbeats. In front went a small girl, maybe four years old, with wild orange curls and dressed in motley like the jester in the court of the faery queen. They looked so happy in their self-contained little world that I was both jealous of them, and happy with them.