In April I wrote a blog post about a retreat that I had been on.  I thought that I had finished with it as a subject but when I came to develop and scan some of the photos I took I realised there was something else to say.

The location of the retreat was an educational trust housed in some beautifully refurbished farm/manor buildings next to the grounds of a later manorial building,  possibly 18th century,  itself surrounded by extensive fields and woodlands.  As a retreatant you have the right to wander in these grounds.

One morning I decided to take myself off during free time with my Rolleicord.  It was just after I had taken the photograph above that I noticed a figure approaching.  I had seen one or two random dog walkers on other days but this chap looked a bit different.   He was dressed as if by one of the better kind of gents’ country outfitters circa 1960: leather, waxed cotton, moleskin, a trilby.  A suspicion formed in my mind.

I was approaching from his right and could see that I would have to exercise a quarter-turn back onto the main path and so pass him.  Clearly we could not ignore one another.

“Good morning” I said to seize the initiative.

“Good morning” he replied.

I think there may have been a few words about the weather then - silence.

Then he said, “Who are you?”

Since we were both Englishmen of a certain age and therefore in the business of Giving Nothing Away For The Moment conversationally I thought this was a tad direct.  I clearly wasn’t a dog walker since I didn’t have a dog   But he had asked me so I replied.

“I’m Peter” I said.

This had the merit of answering his question yet revealing nothing.  (I think that somewhere in the back of my mind was a scene from a Just William story in which William meets a Great Actor somewhere in his village.  After a short exchange the Great Actor booms at William: “Don’t you know who I am?”  And William replies: “No, an’ I bet you don’t know who I am either.”)

By now, my suspicion had turned to certainty.  This was the Lord of the Manor.  He clearly did not see it as his place to explain that and so I had to take him by the hand conversationally, so to speak.

“You’re the owner?”

“Yes.”

I explained that I was a retreatant from next door.  (Who else would be walking around his private forest, I wondered, and then thought of the dog walkers. Maybe he was patrolling.)

“Of course you are!” he cried.  “How stupid of me.”

For my part, I wanted no toff-meets-commoner politenesses so I yanked the conversation right round and asked about  how he managed the woodlands.  Very little, seemed to be the answer.  Then I asked about the many, many yew trees and their age.  But he, in turn, was having  none of my man-to-man egalitarianism.

“Not very old” he shrugged,  “The Victorians were very fond of them, you know”  Was there just a hint of lineage there, I wondered.

I thought that I had done my bit for inter-class harmony by that point.

“Good to meet you” I said.

“Quite” he replied, and we went on our separate ways.

He seemed a decent cove and I would like to have stayed chatting to him for longer but I didn’t think he was inviting it.  I did get this photograph of a beech tree below, though, immediately after.