The silence and the lambs

I work in Reading. For those of you who have the good fortune never to have been there, it's a large busy town on the M4 corridor, about 35 miles west of London. It's hot, ugly, stuffy, choked with traffic during the day and full of drunken morons in the evenings, to name but a few drawbacks. I live 16 miles away in Benson, a small village in south Oxfordshire. I should have thought that sentence was explanation enough. Nonetheless people, most recently my solicitor, keep asking me why I don't live in Reading.

I walked out into my back garden late tonight to see what my rabbit was up to. It was dark, the air was clear and fresh and it was almost silent. So quiet that I was able to stand and listen to lambs bleating in nearby fields. Not to mention the burble of the village brook as it scurries by at the bottom of my front garden. That's why I don't live in Reading.