Things beginning with s

Swallows: they are back.  I have been watching for weeks, looking out of the window, glancing up as I walk across the gravel, turning to look over my shoulder as I go for corn for the chickens.  Nothing.  Nothing.  Empty sky, despite the soaring buzzard, the flapping crow, the bouncing, skittering chaffinch.  And then one moment, looking out of the window for nothing, for something else, a swoop and a dive and a magic shape disappearing almost before you have seen it.  You stop.  You look.  You are waiting, too still.  And here it comes again: the perfect arc.  They are back.

And today a shepherd's hut.  A place to sit and write and dream, up here in the far corner of the field.  We have already decided to have one, so today is for detail: colour, height, position of sockets, how big to make the hearth for the woodburner.  A place to be and not to do with a far, high view up across the valley and up towards the hills.