14. Well, maybe...

There will come a time when the present state of affairs is forgotten. When the steady but irregular stream of diverted traffic, making its way around the closed road up at Toddington where the big yellow pipes of replacement gas mains are waiting to go in, will have disappeared. April, they say the Toddington road will reopen. We're already a month or so into this river of lorries, buses and cars; and to calibrate your memory, see the date on the photograph below. That was yesterday.

The fragments of car up at the T-junction with the Sedgeberrow road will have been picked up (we're doing our best!) or have been spread away, along with headlight glass on the other roads where impatience, unfamiliarity, and the narrow squeezes of our roads have collided with the high tides and sudden pulses of new traffic. And next week is Gold Cup!

At sunset we find a carefully prepared bag of rubbish, placed in a friendly way on the verge, not yet crushed by a tractor pulling over to help let a lorry pass going the other way. Nearby, in the ditch, a Macdonalds, less considerately thrown; but so close, they may be related.

Their faith, whoever they are, that there is someone to pick this up for them, says so much for this parish, for this village.

6 March 2025. The towards-Dumbleton road at sunset.
(A quiet moment.)

(And thank you to our many guests who slow down, who acknowledge and wave, and who pull over to let others get by)