Windless, misty, sun just visible, rather chilly. Many fungi in the woods, including one which at a certain stage gets a sort of white fluffy mildew on it & smells rather like bad meat. Immense quantities of wood pigeons & large flights of starlings. Came on a field of what appeared to be weeds but think it may possibly be buckwheat, which is sometimes grown about here for the sake of the partridges. Small black three-cornered seed like a miniature beech nut. Brought home a patch of a kind of rough moss & stuck it on the rockery, hoping it will grow. Today at 3pm. Hung out a lump of fat for the tits. They had found it before 5pm.
5 eggs.
In just a paragraph, Orwell transports us to another land and another era. Magical.
This is a crazy good year for fungi. I have never seen such a profusion or variety, and never such large ones, growing in every yard and field. It’s kind of creepy, like an alien invasion, or a preparation for something sinister.
He is alive to his world, both partaking and contributing.
a lump of fat for the tits, that’s always nice.
He knew the war was coming, and that what we now call ‘self-sufficiency’ would be vital.
As well as allowing him to return to the ‘Golden Country’ of his youth, and supplementing his meagre income as a writer, this was practical preparation for the horrors to come, which might have lasted indefinitely, for all Orwell knew.
Ah, the tits will definitely appreciate the fat.
Although if they do too much, their size may cause problems with their flight