Play ‘What’s that song?’ in a You Am I edition, Wilco stylee, or New Order fashion (or you could choose your own). A great bit of Amazon database fiddling via B3ta.
Went for a long walk on the weekend, down to the Torrs park under New Mills, past the bridges, into open countryside.
I’d already wandered around the farmland on my own (keeping to the path) a few Saturdays before, and had seen some llamas – Laura refused to believe me, until she saw them with her own eyes, chewing away in the middle of the field. Further on, we counted 46 sheep in a field. One of the stocky, black faced ewes wandered up to us and poked her head through the wire, pleading in a wordless sheep way to get her out of here. They all had numbers painted on them, for some sort of EU regulation, I’d think, and this one was number 33. We kept walking and the sheep followed us. Luckily the fence was stout, otherwise we’d have a friendly sheep tied up in the back yard.
Once the ground had gotten too boggy, we turned ninety degrees and headed for the A6, wanting to hit the canal before we got to the road. After a steep climb – not unusual in New Mills – we found the canal that lead to seemingly the only industry in New Mills, the Swizzels Matlow sweet factory. Before we started getting the minty smell of the factory, we passed the New Mills marina, full of canal boats sitting out the winter. As we went past Swizzels, we could see the dormant bagging machines, waiting to pump cellophane wrappers full of pressed sugar. The canal kept going, with enough bends to intrigue us about what was around the corner. Eventually the thought of a nice cup of tea and a sit down lead us back to our stripped front room, to admire a mysterious copper pipe that dangles from the ceiling, uncovered when I took out the horrible arches either side of the fireplace.
I’m waiting patiently for my work laptop to arrive – it was ordered nearly two weeks ago, and everytime the studio door opens, I hope it’s the delivery man with the laptop shaped parcel under their arm. Anytime soon…