Glimpsed in the front seats of an approaching car, two people are wagging the forefingers of their left hands and are shaking their heads from side to side in perfect synchrony, as if in some kind of dance. Each is laughing. Each has bright eyes and perfect teeth.
I disturb a rabbit who has been concealed beneath a bramble patch when I approach the gate of a field still carpeted with snow. He dashes away, white tail flashing and back feet sending up cloudy spurts of snow that glitter in the morning sunshine.
On the very top of a solitary sunlit tree, high above the snow filled valley of the River Uck, between Hadlow Down and Buxted, a single magpie and a huge old buzzard ( who is three times as large ) are sitting only four feet apart, silent in unruffled repose.
