Little Wing

The Wandering Minstrel has returned to the Arkleby boheme from his job as a charity mugger down south. When I step out into the courtyard he's hard at work on his car, stereo system turned up to 11, playing Jimi Hendrix's delicious Little Wing. The lyricism of those guitar notes, their lightness of touch and ethereal timbre are somehow right in tune with the heat and haze of the Cumbrian afternoon. Out in the fields beneath my window they're hay-timing. The weekend starts here . . .