Another of those amazing days when the intensity and quality of light on the island makes colours so vivid; bright blue sea, dazzling white chalk cliffs, emerald-green emerging barley and fresh grass, golden-brown bracken and inky purple clouds.

I found myself wondering, on the dog walk this morning, why rain isn't purple or grey or black, given the colour of rain clouds. But I didn't have to ponder for very long why the puddles were golden - the cattle were watching out for the approach of the tractor, loaded with a giant hay bale. They started mooing loudly, Dog panicked and tried to bolt, dragging me through the puddles in the tracks left by the tractor, then compounded her crime by lunging at a black lab, knocking me into the fence.

"Are you all right?" asked its owner, belatedly, as I picked bracken out of my hair and surveyed the golden toffee splodges that had been my feet a few minutes previously.

I said I'd get back to her.