writing fifty: adventures everyday and extraordinary
Of course, Keats didn’t live in the age of the halogen bulb. If he had, things might have been different.*
I was feeling the need to find somewhere lovely and just be there, with no demands, difficulties or despairs. Blackwell House is only a quarter of an hour away and I had a visitor coming for the weekend. Excellent. That would do the job nicely.
The perma-rain—fairly discouraging as far as getting onto the fells is concerned—was due to lift a bit on the Saturday afternoon, so (more…)
Bewildered, amongst bewildered sheep, I was blundering around a mud-skiddy fell in the steady, slanting, seeping rain. My legs, however, were having a whole different experience—of sea breeze and wide sky and blue air; of sand sliding away beneath my feet. It was a powerful muscle memory of walking in dunes on Balmedie beach when I was little: how tiring it is; how your feet slip away from you, slowly and sometimes swiftly, at unexpected angles; how hard it is to gain any ground. I felt 52 and 8 at the same time. Very odd.
This grey Sunday afternoon I’d finally managed to lever myself off the sofa, having decided on a small adventure: visiting the Chapel at Keld. Someone had (more…)
Silent, upon a peak in Cumbria.Or to be more precise: intermittently rustling, upon a peak in Cumbria.
Or to be even more precise: intermittently rustling as I shifted around inside in a bivvy bag on a flattish grassy hillock overlooking Easedale Tarn on a clear early autumn night. In Cumbria. (more…)
For weeks now, being in the Cumbrian countryside has been like walking through a 70s Flake ad, only with no innuendo and barely enough chocolate. The meadows are extraordinary this year. I’ve never seen so many buttercups, such clover and poppies, never mind the numberless others I can’t name; and I can’t remember seeing a farmer, one man, mowing a meadow (sorry) for hay, so early. But on this hot Bank Holiday Monday the freshly-cut fields were corduroy-striped with (more…)