There can be no comparison to a hay bale. A hay bale is round, warm and friendly, a cosy bed, a perfect companion.

A hay bale must be large, large enough to be difficult to climb, but small enough to be the perfect size to be saddled and ridden.

It must be tied by netting or string, invisible at a distance, not too slippery, not too much of a barrier between hay and skin.

The hay must be soft, but at the same time prickling, warm and dry, and smelling sweet, smelling enough to be evident froma  distance, but not enough to stimulate phlegm to movement in the nasal passages.

A hay bale must also have companions. There is no use in a hay bale standing solitary and alone, for it loses its optimism and warmth. There must be sixty or seventy hay bales in each pack, standing to attention in a line, and there must be the perfect distance between them; not too far, to allow short legs to step between them, but not too close, because then there is no challenge or risk in the space between.

These hay bales must lie in a field, which is thick and green, and unpolluted by the disruptive fumes of a road, or the growl of an airport. The field must sit at the very top of the world on its green throne, and be invisible from most directions. It must have a secret entrance through an overgrown path sunken metres below the pedestal of the field.

Finally, the hay bales must be bugless and silent. Bugless because when the bugs scuttle and scurry time passes and the world goes on, and silent because they must not answer back, for that is rude and unamiable, and your best friends must listen and advise in silence.

Humans have grown lazy over the years. We have lost the true art of perceiving, and taken the short route by speaking our thoughts. Yet this is inadequate compared to the sincerity of what we could perceive if we remembered how. If we could perceive, we would know so much, and understand so much. Speech and words have destroyed that art.

But here with the hay bales, silent perceiving is their nature, and they will teach you to perceive too.

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Author guidance for This exercise

I had a spell of haybale mania last summer. Who doesn't feel utterly inspired by a good bale?

updated Feb 10 by BasilWoodall