A night in the forest

I decided to spend last night (Easter Sunday April 24/Monday April 25) in the forest. After a winter in town, the dark and the quiet takes some getting used to. As soon as it was light, I got up to let the hens out and found that four of them were out already - they can fly up and get over the fence of their enclosure which is more to keep foxes out than them in. Their water had run out, so I refilled that and checked for eggs in the straw. One of them stubbornly lays in the same place just outside the fence, bolshy behaviour that must bestow some kind of reproductive advantage (were her eggs fertilised). Harry is coming up to try his hand at fishing this morning mainly I suspect in order to legitimise possession of maggots as bait. I attended the Easter service at St John's, Burnside in Moffat, and was aghast at the well meant use of a 'modern' form of service. Tinkering with both the traditional form and magnificent language of the liturgy must be responsible for much of the decline in church attendance, a colossal failure of judgement and extraordinary arrogance on the part of the church authorities. But the message gets through, and the congregation is a model of friendliness and welcome. It seems that the new wording and form of service was chosen for the service yesterday 'in case there were visitors'. Well, if I count as a visitor, take it from me: I would have preferred the Prayer Book and King James.