Jaye Marie and Anita Dawes

The workmen are still around, and they seem to have hit a problem. This is not the first time they have been digging up the road outside our house, and they had a problem then too.

Much walking around, conferring with each other. You can almost see the head-scratching from here but has the advantage of keeping their noisy machines quiet. 

This time, however, we have temporary traffic lights to put up with, and you guessed it, they are right outside our house. So, although the machines are quiet, we are having to put up with traffic waiting for the lights to change. Cars are not so bad, but motorbikes are deafening!

The noise is interfering with my ability to think straight. Time to get out of here and go for a walk!

When I heard about this local walk, one I didn’t know anything about, I almost declined, preferring to wait until the weather became warmer. It had stopped being quite so abominable, the sun was shining but there was a slight chilly wind.

But the lure of discovery was too strong to ignore. It was just a ten-minute walk from our house, so an easy walk for me and my geriatric knees. Once outdoors, the chilly wind tried to remind me that Spring wasn’t properly here yet, but the sun kept me company as I walked along on my first excursion in 2021.

I hadn’t been out of the house for ages and was thoroughly enjoying looking at all the houses and gardens. Petersfield is an ordinary town, but even the ordinary can be fascinating if you have been incarcerated all winter.

From what I could see on my way to the walk, people everywhere were on the move. Builders were busy, gardeners too. Windows were being cleaned.

Nature had been busy too. New green growth and spring flowers had arrived in all the gardens, and I looked forward to seeing what I would find on the walk.

Tucked between the houses in an ordinary street, I saw the beginnings of a river, not much more than a trickle at this point. I also saw the mud on some of the pathways, and hoping this wouldn’t get any worse, I set off.

Although I have mentioned before that our Council keeps our town tidy, they obviously hadn’t got around to this walk yet. It was extremely wild in places, with fallen trees, undergrowth and a lot more mud, which made following the river (such as it was) rather difficult.

Now, I love a bit of a ramble. Climbing over trees in the mud is a fun day out for me, but my family don’t share my enthusiasm and at the risk of being nagged to death, I decided not to push it, and decided to call it a day.

I wasn’t too disappointed, for just being out in the fresh air felt wonderful.

Then I caught sight of something out of the corner of my eye. Something rather large was swooping around above my head. Straining to see what it was, due to the bright sunshine, I couldn’t believe what I thought I was seeing. When it flew around me again, there was no mistaking what it was. A huge ruddy coloured bird with a massive wingspan and fan-like forked tail, it could only be a Kite. The first Kite I had ever seen in Petersfield!

I stood and stared, mesmerised by the show he was putting on, almost for my benefit. When he finally flew away, I felt both elated and deflated.

But before I reached our house, I saw him again. It was as if he was reassuring me that he was here to stay…