Water fight!

We're driving down a series of country lanes in the area of the UK where Wales meets Shropshire. There's a deep, earthy, smokey, straw-like aroma in the air. The smell of a mid-summer evening in the countryside. A giant deep yellow crescent moon is glowing in the sky just above the horizon. Everything feels nostalgic, somehow. Heavy. Laden. 

We've been at Nathan's sister's house all day celebrating the fifteenth birthday of Nathan's nephew, Lewis. It was roasting hot, and we sat in the garden for most of the afternoon, eating burgers and dipping Doritos into pots of yoghurt. 

The highlight of the day was almost certainly the enormous water fight which became something of a grudge match between me and Nathan's niece, Beckie. I was armed with an enormous water pistol. She was forced to fight back with two plastic cups. We stalked each other around the garden whilst the rest of the family took refuge in the conservatory. 

Nathan's entire family was present. His sister, her three children and their partners, his Dad and step Mum, his Mum and (might as well be) step Dad, and, of course, Little Renee.

The most amusing guest was Nathan's father's dog, Barney, who got overwhelmed by the numbers of people and started humping everything in sight! I think there is little in life more amusing than the sight of a dog trying to hump a human, particularly when the human in question is Nathan's mother holding her great grand daughter. Today proved rather conclusively (if proof were needed) that I am still a child at heart... And this makes me very happy. 

In the evening we did a general knowledge quiz and then sat around with a guitar, singing songs, before Beckie amazed us all by singing, word-for-word, inflection-for-inflection the whole of my Hampstead Heath: the Musical song.  Very flattering indeed. And a lot of fun. She knew it better than me! 

We've just had a bit of a nasty scare after realising we were rapidly running out of petrol in a part of the world where petrol stations are few and far between. With every closed garage, levels of anxiety rose a little higher, but eventually I found enough signal on my phone to download a "find a garage app", which took us into a little town called Newport off the A41, where we struck gold. 

There was a curious humming sound in the garage, which I recorded on my little zoom machine. I've started recording sounds across the country for a future project based around the ancient counties of England. It's long been a great obsession of mine to write an album of material which celebrates the beauty and history of England. Specifically England. I'm actually planning to write a work for string quartet and natural sounds recorded in the ancient counties. I've already recorded some fascinating sounds in Wiltshire, Warwickshire and East Sussex, but won't score anything until I've got a remarkable database of material. It's very much a long-term project.