Mid November. Rooks clatter and cry in the plantation by the church; rain seeps down from a grey sky. The dragonfly days of summer seem very far away. In the twilight of a particularly dreich afternoon, I knelt by the garden pond to lift out some of the water weed, so that the little pool didn’t become overgrown and choked.

Was it really only two months since the blue hawker dragonflies had flashed over this sunlit water