Country diary: A strange but perfect autumn day | Paul Evans

The Marches, Shropshire: A rainbow's feet touch the earth beneath black vanilla clouds, one end at Wat's Dyke, the other at the nearby hospital"It gives showers for today," says the man poking an errant sprig of privet back into the otherwise immaculate face of the hedge. This micro-fidget sends a ripple, strikes a tone - there is something weirdly perfect about today. It appears in a rainbow, its feet touching earth beneath black vanilla clouds, with one crock of gold buried under Wat's Dyke - a ghostly linear earthwork of the northern Welsh Marches - and the other under the orthopaedic hospital in Gobowen. As the sky lifts to a pale autumnal blue, the middle of the arc fades, but the remaining colours are vivid fragments of a lucid dream.Black sheep are lying in the centre of the hillfort because it was and will be raining and they don't want to be disturbed from their reverie on a spot of warm dry grass. But they are alert now and all staring in the same direction, as if some spectral dog lopes along the fence-line. These are iron age sheep with hard mouths and sharp eyes that shaped the hill country long ago, arranging themselves, black on green - a captive audience from pre-history that is indifferent to human drama. The birds are quiet and distant, even the invisible ones within spitting distance in the hawthorn and oak scrub, their conspiratorial chatter bright as berries, coded into their own frequency. Continue reading...