Rural drama

Don't get all excited. I shall explain my title in a minute. Everything, after all, is relative in these tedious times. But first, the usual Scottish preoccupation with the weather, for today's was not what was promised, not really. It kept raining annoyingly - just this morning, but that's when I needed it to be dry. I discovered that I'd been neglecting the laundry (can't be a domestic goddess on all fronts) and had to seize the chance to get a couple of loads out on the line. And I did, with relative expedition, only to have it rained on. (I left it. The rain didn't last and there was a minor gale blowing.)

The drama I refer to occurred as we set off along the shore road to the south, into the teeth of the minor gale I've just mentioned. The field beside us was dotted with black cattle, peacefully grazing or - in the case of the overgrown infant beast nearby, suckling from its long-suffering mother. Suddenly the animal closest to us started pawing the ground, made some deeply disturbing bellowing sounds, and set off at a lumbering run - mercifully not at us (there was a fence) but towards the man who'd just passed us on a tractor with a big digger thing attached. Apparently digger man signified something - food? Treats? Do cows get treats? Anyway, I'm still city kid enough to find a running full-sized cow/bull (I hadn't checked) dramatic and alarming. Within a minute, another animal started off in the same direction, and before we'd gone any distance the whole field was moving - except for the mother with the overgrown infant. 

There. Wasn't that exciting? Meanwhile, in another country, the rules for the Covid dance were changing again, while treaties were being mauled and abandoned - think Europe, but also think Scotland and Wales. I'd like to bury myself in the idiosyncrasies of cattle, but insanity keeps breaking in under cover of the plague. So I've relegated my (fairly unexciting) photo of the black beasts to the extras, and blipped instead the burn that runs out of Castle Toward estate over the beach where I bathed not all that long ago.

Summer seems suddenly a another country.