Trees

The life of a Tree Warden is very hard.

The sun shone,  the birds sang,  the barley waved and the peas and beans rustled.   The jogger called a cheery “Good Morning!” and the runner nodded a breathless greeting.   The young lady dog-walker kept her eyes averted,  wanting to be solitary:  the couple spoke and waved from 20 metres,  petting the dog,  making a small fuss.   The milk cows grazed and gazed.   A fishing heron protested raucously and flapped ungainly into the air.   They have a way of flying away in a big circle and,  when the dangerous creature has gone,  settling again in almost the same place.   The pair of swans in the lode was too busy puddling duckweed through its pair of bills to notice.   But the mallard fled,  for worlds looking like an X-wing fighter,  straight out of Star Wars.

The fen goes endlessly to the flat horizon,  with its wind turbines and pylons,  growing quietly to itself.

Ah,  the trees.

A Lime,  in flower,  waiting to drip its sickly sweet smelling sap onto any polished car that might venture that far into the fen.

A Crab-apple,  its fruit swelling from the rain and the sun,  but not yet coloured.

A few small Oaks,  planted along the headland next to the drove;  and a magnificent old tree in the middle of a barley field at the head of a ditch.

A grove of Blackthorn,  grown into trees,  not hedgerows,  with the sloes swelling.   Jocelyn will want to know about these for her sloe gin later in the year.

Some of the hedgerows are wild,  neglected,  growing toward becoming trees.   Others,  along the paved drove,  have been meticulously trimmed.   Some people rail against the flail which the farmer uses to trim the hedges but,  used carefully,  and at the right time of year,  they do a good job.   By now,  early August,  the flailed hedges look very smart.

Fen Ditton

Boule is a very gentle game.
Or it might be pétanque.
References are vague on the differences between the two.

At the Plough and Fleece, in Horningsea, they play pétanque in a gravel rectangle bordered by old railway sleepers. They (they all seem to be very serious men) take the game very seriously. Do their lives (or their pockets) depend on the outcome?
In Fen Ditton it’s all very different. For one thing they are all very much older. They also seem to be so much happier. They play on grass, where the roll of the boule is unpredictable.

Perhaps the fundamental difference is grass and gravel.
In the gravel pit, accuracy of throwing is everything. The boule do not roll, even an inch (Sorry. Centimetre). Where you throw it is where it lands, and where it scores (or not). The result is greeted with dead silence; whether approval or scorn is impossible to tell.
The silent, serious men drink beer, from pint glasses. Beer: that ghastly brew, the sole purpose of which was to disinfect tainted water.

On grass you may be dead accurate as the boule leaves your hand, but then the grass and the ground take control. Players squeal with delight, or howl with anguish as the boule meanders around the imperceptible bumps and hollows.
The excitable pensioners eat fish and chips (the A10 chip van stops nearby, by special appointment to MargaretW) and mostly drink wine, from plastic glasses. Wine: that heavenly nectar, the sole purpose of which was to disinfect tainted water.

Then there are the jokes.
Just how many variations of a risqué joke can twelve retired people make on the word ‘boule’? And every one is so very, very funny.