Photothon 23: If you build it

It is at this point that I start to question my thought processes. I actually ran here for the express purpose of taking a photo of a haystack (or hay wall if you prefer).

The photothon has had an interesting effect on my route-making. I now give it more thought and try to go to places that might have something to photograph or some attached story. In this case it is a very tiny story.

The previous evening we had been out and were driving back at about eleven, just after dark, when we saw a cluster of very bight lights ahead. They were not moving so they were not vehicles coming towards and anyway pattern was wrong. It was puzzling, we knew we were in the middle of nowhere and had no idea what it could be.

When we passed could see that they had been harvesting the fields and only just stopped. They had been working by the lights of their tractors and the large harvester. Now it was finished the whole group were relaxing and having a few beers after a long hard day.

For some reason I thought of two things almost simultaneously. The first Thomas Hardy and images of harvests in the nineteenth century. The second was a film of several years ago, 'Field of Dreams', where Kevin Costner built a baseball field on his farm. I just remembered the switching-on of floodlights in the middle of the countryside. This field glowed in the same way.

Anyway the inner voice that Kevin Costner followed said that 'If you build it he will come' – so I thought I'd better go back there.

But this was France and not Iowa or Wessex, discarded amid the clover I saw this packet of Gitanes