The first empty bus that passed out house came as a shock. Even now, several weeks later, I hate the sight of them. They speak to me of a dis-ease in our rural world in the same way that the empty fields of 2001 were a visible sign of the Foot and Mouth epidemic.

The comparison stops there, of course. The empty fields were due to the culling of their usual occupants; keeping the buses empty is to save the lives of theirs. It is the emptiness in place of life and normality that shocks.

Jeff

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