It pleases me to sit on the mound of earth behind the house at the end of a long, wet, summer evening, to lean my back against the trunk of the Beech tree and feel the soft rain on my face. The sun will have long given way to pillows of grey cloud blown in from the sea and the light will be fast-fading.

The plaintive evening call of Curlews or some such birds pierces the gathering gloom of the wild garden and the fields beyond, and the smell of damp earth and trampled grass mixes with the melancholy songs and wrap around me like a blanket.

I am alone and no-one inside the house will have any intention of coming out to keep me company on a night like this, a night of gentle rain infused with the smell of burning turf, and it pleases me that way, and just as they become taken with some new distraction or other, whiskey hits the back of my throat. With the glass up to my mouth and my head thrown back to receive, I see the night’s first star aiming its cold beam like a lance through a gap in the clouds and I feel good.