Bog Myrtle & Peat

I went to Llanelieu in January, when snow lay in the fields and the cattle were steaming. It’s only a short step to the church from the comfort of a nearby town, but I was chilled and very alone in the sunset which fell beyond the wooden bell-tower. Night was coming, but I had been looking forward to seeing Llanelieu for days. It’s a famous building, and the articles I’d read ahead of my visit seemed to anticipate an immediate connection. So even before I’d left my home, I knew what I wanted from the place.

My footsteps crunched in the grass, and I walked around fallen mounds of grass to find a spot where I could stand and watch the evening fall. Rooks passed, and something like a woodcock fussed in the brambles. Given time, stars began to spark from the east and overhead; the gravestones so cold that I would have lost my fingers to touch them. Then I went inside and gazed at the celebrated rood-screen which somehow survived the Reformation in almost perfect condition.

The woodwork was painted with ox-blood, and blessed from head to ceiling with the staring eyes of stencilled roses. A cross once stood against the mud-red boards – it was taken away to mark a transition of creed, and perhaps the point was well made. But you can easily see the mark where it used to be. Everything’s red except the sacred place where the ugly brushes couldn’t reach, and that lack of a mark is louder than the mark itself. I loved it, but I was restless in the twilight, and in a mind for something more. So I began to expand the blanks of the darkening church. I reached for other things I’d hoped to see; I made out the ghosts of wall-paintings which weren’t really there, and inferred from a knock in the timber that old carvings lurked in the dismal porch. They don’t, but I saw them anyway.

Before the light failed altogether, I painted the scene inside the old building. I could hardly see my canvas board; colours failed me, so I made them up from memories of photographs I’d seen in books. The oils stayed wet and they smudged on the short drive down to the town. And now that painting hangs above the window in my room, and it was further warped when I drove two holes through it; two holes to hang a knotted woollen thread. It’s nothing like reality, but it catches my eye every day.

I often write about Llanelieu. It’s fair to imagine that I’ve spent more time writing about that trip than I spent on the trip itself. And I see that I gathered only the barest details before turning away, saying “thank you, I’ll take it from here”. I had already designed the mould into which that evening would be poured, and the distortions were baked in from the start. As time goes by, the memory has fed upon itself and changed it beyond all recognition. It’s become a nonsense, and perhaps I could have conjured something like this note from the energy of my imagination – and saved myself the work of going.