CAME down a back lane from Leominster. On the downhill, where the car picked up speed, the lane, lined with white cow parsley, unfurled, as if blossoming itself. I dangled a hand out of the car window, intending to tattoo on the door Supergrass’s, which was loud on the radio; and then caught the smell of incoming rain on the evening air. And that tension in the air that comes before rain, as the natural world, the flowers and the animals, gird themselves. Looking across to the west, I saw that the long wall of the Black Mountains had assumed the ominous dark hue that
