cheshire cheese

The soldier had stood there longer than anyone remembered. By day, the metal silhouette was just a memorial — silent, unmoving, poppies bright against cold steel. But at dusk, when the wind slid through the hedges and the bridge groaned over the dark water, something changed. The first to notice was the toy giraffe left on the bench. Each morning it faced the garden. Each night, it turned toward the bridge. No one admitted moving it. One evening, mist gathered low across the grass. A faint metallic tapping echoed from the memorial. Not loud — just the soft rhythm of boots shifting weight after a century of waiting. A figure stepped away from the silhouette. Not fully solid. Not fully shadow. A soldier carrying neither anger nor peace — only the unfinished feeling of someone who never returned home. He walked toward the bridge, stopping beside the bench. The giraffe tipped over as if brushed by unseen fingers. Across the water came distant whispers — names spoken by voices long gone. The soldier paused, listening. Then slowly, he turned back toward the garden, toward the poppies, toward remembrance. By morning, the silhouette stood as before. But the grass beneath the bench was pressed flat — as if someone had kept watch there all night.

On the edge of a quiet Cheshire village, where snowdrops nodded like tiny white lanterns in the grass, there stood an old bronze stag upon a stone. The villagers said he was once alive—a guardian of the fields—until a sorrowful winter spell turned him to metal. Each morning, the bells of St John’s rang across the churchyard, and the sound drifted over hedgerows and green pastures to a lone, leafless tree in the meadow. That tree was the key to the enchantment, though no one remembered why. One bright frost-tipped day, a wandering soul wrapped in a patchwork scarf followed the path past the church and out into the open fields. He paused by the snowdrops and felt their quiet courage pushing through the cold earth. “Bravery blooms even in winter,” he murmured. At the dead tree, he placed a single snowdrop at its roots and told it a story of spring. The wind hushed. The clouds leaned closer. From the distant hill came a tremor like a heartbeat. Back in the churchyard, the bronze stag shivered. Metal softened to hide; stone warmed to moss. With a mighty breath, the stag leapt from his pedestal and ran across the emerald fields toward the waking tree. And from that day on, winter never stayed too long in Smallwood.

The gate sagged like a jaw of iron teeth, guarding fields soaked with old rain and older secrets. A smiling walker paused, unaware the land remembered him. In the grass lay a wing, stripped to bone, an angel unfinished. Muddy ruts filled with sky, reflecting clouds that never moved. Beyond, the valley opened like a grave, ponds breathing cold mist. Hedges were cut blunt as vows. Something followed the man, not in footsteps but in echoes. When he turned back, dusk had closed the gate. The fields kept him, patient, silent, and alive. Forever waiting beneath the skin of earth.

The blue line on the map looked confident, almost smug, as it looped through moorland and villages. David followed it anyway, shoes squelching through bog, calves burning on hills that never seemed to end. Cows watched with mild judgment as he picked his way across their fields, already questioning his life choices. Somewhere near Rudyard, the rain teased but never committed, like the day itself. By the time he stopped, breathless and grinning, time felt stretched—longer, wider. Life was still short, of course. But today, it had taken the scenic route.

After my little four legged air raid sirens ,decided I had way to much sleep and began protesting,got up fed them put brew on for later and into gear an out the door to pootle a nice but chilly few miles before breakfast