Nipped first thing to Hatherleigh market to buy some more guinea fowl to join my loan male who is starting to look sad without his fox-eaten friends and spend time on my windowsill looking at me. But there was every kind of bird under the sun except guinea fowl. There were not many smiles going on during the auction, but the cheerful bloke carrying these geese said he’d bring me some next Tuesday. Chatting to an elderly lady in the tiny, rammed, cafe, she told me she had lived here all her life and remembers standing in this very shed when she was a little girl, with her father and their cows tied up to the same railing we were leaning against in the queue for tea and cake.