Still and Silent Animals

A grey and rainy day. Sheets of drizzle so light they felt so barely wet. Beads of water on the lenses of my glasses that are already scratched and cracked.
Walked with Em today from Shoreham into Bramber along the river Adur. A line of trees in the distance under leaden skies. Silent rams in fields staring at passing Yorkshire terriers. The water of the river cold and still, a current that didn't seem to flow.
Earlier that morning, lying on the bed, listening to certain sounds out of the window; that of a single dog barking, a strange and lonely sound, some Black Shuck lost in the labyrinth of gardens outside. There was a bell too, a church bell, a sound I most associate with Worcester and summer and staying in Joe Bird's living room. There it seemed to chime for summer and warmth, here the bell is tiny and piercing - a bell to toll in winter, those dead and dreaming hours, those ghost story days. More and more trees are looking empty of leaves. There is a pleasing bleakness outside now.
We found an old church somewhere on the walk today. A Norman looking church - not that I know anything of ecclesiastical architecture - out on the banks of the river. It looked like a building from an M.R.James story. Close your eyes and you could imagine yourself on some turn-of-the-century Suffolk Close; 'si tu non veneris ad me ego veniam ad te', oh whistle and I'll come to you my lad... 'quis est ist qui uenit...'
On the other side of the graveyard there was a small field - a paddock really, full of silent miniature horses, who didn't exactly regard us with disdain, but didn't regard us at all.
They didn't even look at us, didn't even notice we we were there.