Because The Woods

     I roam alone with our dogs up hill and down vale and through a lot of boggy fields.  Recently a friend asked me, ‘Don’t you ever get scared wandering around the countryside by yourself?’ She lives in Hackney by the way.
   ‘No,’ I replied, airily, ‘I’m terribly brave.’

   Until that is, I enter a wood.

   There’s a small local wood where we go quite often and, yesterday I went with the dogs but without Shedley Mode. I’d only been there five minutes when I got severely spooked. It was the cry that did it.  A single, guttural sound, tailing off into a lament. Not quite animal, less than human. Instantly the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. My heart started to thump, my breathing accelerated faster than Lewis Hamilton coming out of a bend.

     Normally I rather like being scared.