Soon nothing will be left of Millie's wicker basket

Once she discovered the possibilities and joy of pulling the clippings out of the hessian backing there has been no stopping her. Each rug now has more holes in it than actual rug. Millie just looks pleased with herself and reflectively chews a piece of clipping.

You forget just how destructive a young puppy can be. And Jack Russels don’t do obedience. Her wicker basket is now just a collection of sharp pieces of cane sticking up round her cushion. Soon there will be nothing left of it. She does get on very well with our other three dogs, and has now built up a small circle of doggy friends who come to visit her to have their ears and tails pulled and look as though they are enjoying it.

The owners of one of her friends were kind enough to invite me to attend a Harvest Supper and Harvest Festival celebration in a local village hall and church. A good congregation filled the church. However, reflecting the decline in numbers of worshippers, this congregation, many of them farmers, was drawn from a number of parishes.

The church looked beautiful. Flowers and fruit filled the windows and surrounded the pulpit. A real country gathering. Altogether a combination of three vicars and a lay preacher led the service. Hymns were traditional and themed to harvest time with the sermon based on the history of the hymn ‘We plough the fields and scatter, the good seed on the land’.

Did you know the hymn was originally from North Germany and was called the Peasant Song? Neither did I. Nor I think did anyone else.

It was originally seventeen verses long but the translation condensed it down to twelve, and now only three verses, plus the refrain are sung. Up till this point I think the vicar had us all nodding along, enjoying the enlightenment.

Then he chose to contrast the traditional farming methods illustrated in the eighteenth century hymn to those of modern farming with John Betjeman’s parody: ‘We spray the fields and scatter, the poison on the ground’. Quite lost me then.

What a pity he didn’t quote the lovely poem about the church mouse who simply loves harvest festivals as ‘for me the only feast of all, is Autumn’s Harvest Festival’. He stuffs himself with the ears of corn around the font and scrambles up the pulpit stair to ‘gnaw the marrows hanging there’. Maybe though the vicar did know the poem and chose to ignore it because his congregation had to be drawn from such a wide area.

As the church mouse reflects, ‘its strange to me, how very full a church can be, with people I don’t see at all, except at Harvest Festival’.