Encounter
Can you see the line of runner ducks walking across the lane? The picture was taken on Tuesday morning in Abney, a sleepy little Derbyshire village, seven miles south west of our suburban home. Clint had kindly driven me out there for another long walk. The territory was all very familiar to me. Descending from Offerton Moor, I saw a man, a woman and a teenage boy climbing over the stile at the bottom and heading my way up onto the moor. I was twenty yards from them when the woman greeted me by name. I had not seen her in over eleven years. Bamford seen from Offerton Moor I recognised her voice immediately but as she was wearing glasses and a woolly hat, I did not recognise her and at one point I even had to ask, "I'm sorry but I have forgotten your name?" Louisa was a teaching colleague for some fourteen years and though her main subject was French we had occasion to work closely together as pastoral form tutors. Immediately, she was rapping about the school...