After Eddie had gone to bed – just before I did myself – I stepped out again. I think my idea was to see if I could complete the job I had begun when Eddie and I sat outside the stables to watch the rising dusk. Perhaps the sight of a bat or the sound of a tawny owl. Not too much to ask.

It wasn’t like that though. The soft summer rain had ever so slightly increased; there was now a gentle soaking intensity about it. It was not quite audible: I couldn’t hear it on the ground, on my hat, on surface of the water in the horses’ trough.

Silence is seldom complete here. The main road a mile off goes into a nice inviting bend at it’s closest point to us, and the sound of drivers — and especially bikers — making the most of it is part of the background of our lives. But for once I could scarcely hear it. Perhaps the rain had dampened both the sound and the driver’s ardour.

I could hear a little barking and shuffling from the heronry; poor sleepers these birds, they pay the price of safety in numbers by their own restlessness. The rest was just rain and darkness. I sat there for quite a while. Doing, seeing, hearing nothing.

Hard to get more wild than that in 21st century Britain.