At last it’s a warm summer’s day, but rather than the sun shining from an expanse of blue we have instead a muggy heat under a totally overcast sky. There is not the faintest suggestion of a breeze, just a slightly oppressive expectant stillness that even the fluttering of green-veined white butterflies between the pale-petalled cuckoo flowers does nothing to dispel.
The clouds hanging heavily above the land seem to be holding down all sound, so that even what is usually quiet becomes unnaturally loud in the hush. A fly, invisible somewhere in a forest of horsetails, can be heard coming closer and closer as it makes its way along the ditch beside the track.
But it’s the noise made by a cow grazing in the next field, a pretty Belgian Blue cross that seems to have found a particularly succulent patch of grass, that has brought me to a halt. And it’s not just the volume of the scrunching produced by her muscular tongue curling around and tearing away each tuft that is so astonishing, but also its metronomic regularity, as, without pause, mouthful after mouthful is dispatched with machine-like efficiency.
Other movement seems to be too much effort, and once everything within comfortable reach has been taken she merely leans forward so that she can extend her neck a little further and, not missing a beat, begins to mow another arc through the lush green.
When, at last, taking a step becomes unavoidable, it is done with a slow precision, the hoof being barely raised from the ground before it is planted firmly again while, without raising her head, she gets on with the surprisingly noisy task at hand.
A short distance away, her well-grown calf is lying quietly amid a sea of buttercups, chewing rhythmically and scattering troublesome flies with occasional flicks of its tasselled tail. Around and about them, swallows in pursuit of insects skim low over the grass, but from somewhere in the direction of the hills the faint warning rumbles of approaching thunder can already be heard.
