Bog Myrtle & Peat

I left home early to be sure that my foot was first inside the door at Barmannoch. The last light lingered in the trees as I climbed the dyke and crossed the bank towards the old railway. It’s been seventy years since trains have passed this way, and now the line is overgrown with ash… Continue reading

It hasn’t been the year I hoped for, and there have been times in the darkness before dawn when I have caught my reflection in the window and hoped that when day came, it would show me somewhere new. But the same horizon always comes up from the night, and the lights of neighbouring farms… Continue reading

The river fell in steps towards the brig and the boneyard walls at Irongray, and each fall was longer and louder than the one which came before it. On its final plunge to the pools below, the amber sheets were heavy and bright as theatre curtains, and fish waited in the stalls at the footlights’… Continue reading

I was walking in the hills above Presteigne when I heard a quad bike moving. Through the trees, I caught a glimpse of sheep moving in their field, then the flash of a collie beneath them. They were coming towards me, and I had nowhere to hide. Scotland has taught me to walk with impunity,… Continue reading

Failing snow, the performance was set for a wet day in December. The singers were arraigned in a line before their parents, but no sooner had they been chased into formation than they changed it. Faced with the almost-touchable temptation of their mothers and fathers, some ran from the ranks to the audience. And it… Continue reading

There are mosaics to commemorate the life and work of William Blake in the underpass of a railway bridge in Lambeth. I went to see them, and understood them as an apology. Because that railway bridge was laid across the house on Hercules Street where Blake lived in the 1790s, and grand stirrings of the… Continue reading

It was summer when I walked at the Devil’s Dyke, and the hawthorn trees were loud with blossom. Underpinned by flint and chalk, these Downs are unlike anything I’m likely to find at home. In the sun and the glittery blare of grasshoppers, the flowers were larger and more opulent than I could believe. Plants… Continue reading

We went to sea in the summer, timing our trip to the moment when the tide fell furthest from the shore. The Solway’s best when it’s empty, and we were scratching for food in the wracks of rock and kelp which rise around the mud. Conditions were perfect around dawn that day, so I met… Continue reading

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… Continue reading

Rats sprang from the winter’s rick like sparks from a pinewood fire. They rose in a glitter of chaff, and we killed them one at a time. Uel slapped them down with the underside of a spade, and Jackie Pole screamed for the dogs and laughed. The men had come when they saw smoke rising… Continue reading