A passing silence – whatever happened to Sue Gray?

The year began with higher hopes for poor old Albion. The oracles, on the other hand, predicted another year of farce and tragedy. They were not wrong, but we cannot be blamed for our optimism. Back in January, Covid was on the wane, and we were looking forward to returning to some semblance of normality. The media, too, were itching to move on and were talking up the Sue Gray report. If you recall, this was to be the conclusion of the much vaunted enquiry into the drunken debauchery at the heart of government, throughout the Covid lockdowns. Indeed, for a time, it was all Sue Gray this, and Sue Gray that. But the oracles predicted the report would leave us nonplussed, that it would land with an insipid flop, rather than a weighty thump, and so it did. It did not bring down the perpetrators, let alone the government, for whom it ran more like water off a duck’s back, and the joke was on all of us who had stuck to the rules.

In February, Boris went to Ukraine to channel Churchill, and was successful in doing so. From there onwards, we were, to all intents and purposes, in a proxy war with the old enemy, much to the delight of the war-horny hacks, and to the horror of the rest. Thereafter, we have looked on with increasing despair it could happen on the European continent, after our assumptions a globally interconnected economy would prevent such an illogical barbarism ever happening again. But then we are not a rational species, and barbarism is more often our default setting.

For all of his boosterism, Boris and his Churchillian bluster was gone by the summer. Then came soaring energy costs, two more prime ministers, four chancellors, plunging trade, egregious levels of poverty, a financial crash, a stultifying heat wave, a litany of terrible refugee drownings, and mass industrial action by railwaymen, the health service, and firemen. Oh, and the Queen died. Now, here we are on the cusp of 2023, and no one speaks of Sue Gray any more. She is a forgotten footnote in the history of 2022.

As I write, the temperature indoors is nudging thirteen degrees, unlike the thirty-five we briefly touched in July. I am wearing fingerless thermal gloves, and a heavy fleece jacket, with a hot water bottle tucked inside. I feel quite cosy, but it’s a long way from the normality we sought this time last year, and yet I cannot help reflecting that it has been a good year. It has been a year of broadening horizons, so welcome after the Covid restrictions. It has been a year of boots on the hill – indeed, more hills this year than ever before. It has been a year of photographs framed in memory, of the Yorkshire Dales, of Bowland, of the Western Pennines, and the Lancashire Plain. It has been a year of poetry, of blogging, of completing another novel.

Back in the spring, I captured the header photo, a lone wood anemone in a quiet hollow of the horseshoe of the Yarrow valley. In winter’s grip, we can lose sight of the cycle of the seasons, that the wood anemone will flower again, and that, from a certain perspective at least, all will be well. It’s just a matter of time. It falls to each of us then to seek that perspective as best we can, seek also to frame the beauty of the world, in all its diversity. Therein lies our defiance of the disconnected tomfoolery that seems to constitute today’s high office. It is also our rejection of the ever present deeps of nihilism the media would have us wallow in.

As with the long forgotten Sue Gray report, we cannot bank on those in charge, to change what really matters to those now freezing their nadgers off. The change, the hope, the optimism we are looking for, it’s already inside of us, and only we can deliver it. Were I to consult the oracle for 2023, it would say: more of the same, probably, but be happy anyway. Be thoughtful, be wise in your self, honourable in your doings, and all will be well.

My thanks to everyone who has visited and commented here for another year, at WordPress. Your company along the way is, as always, the greatest pleasure. And to those whose blogs I follow, do press on with the good work. The view of the world through your eyes is far more authentic, and worthwhile, than anything I read elsewhere.

And finally:

A passing silence, echoes of awareness,
resisting now the urge to grasp,
whatever random lines
might be wrought and tapped out
into this story of a self.

Fading now, casting off sensation,
feeling, thought,
we reach the quiet shore
that is this observation of being.

Letting come, and go
without judgement,
these ripples
in golden cornfields
of experience
are where we reap our joy,
and it’s from here
we bring the harvest home.

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Spikes on the Pike

^{Stubai 4 point instep crampons}

The cold snap continues, with temperatures down to minus four this morning. There’s been a light fall of snow since we were last out, and it’s become frozen like hammered glass, under a light powdery coating. A clear, dry day today means conditions are too good to be indoors, but we need to find the instep crampons first. I don’t want to end up like the poor old guy who broke his shoulder, and ended up strapped to a plank and driven to A+E by his granddaughter in the back of a van, because there were no ambulances.

Our health service has been running on fumes and the good will of its staff for too long now, and looks finally to have been pushed over the edge everyone, at least on the left of politics, knew was coming. Like Kinnock said in 1987: in the future don’t be young, don’t get old, or ill. He could easily have added: don’t have an accident. He was speaking of the consequences of a win for Thatcher’s conservatism at that year’s election, but our current administration makes hers seem positively benign. They are the most brazenly right-wing we’ve seen since the eighteenth century, and ideologically opposed to the very concept of socialised medicine. And the sharks who keep them in power clearly want it gone.

So, anyway, instep crampons. I bought them after a nightmarish descent from the Old Man of Coniston, one winter, many years ago. I’d gone up the south side which was clear and sunny, then came down the shadow-locked north side, which turned out to be treacherous with rime ice. Fortunately, I haven’t needed them for anything but fun since, and then only rarely do we get the conditions in lowland UK when they’re handy. Not all walking boots are suitable for your full-blown, mountaineering crampon, but with insteps you’re fine. Any old boots will do, and they take up hardly any room in the sack. Mine are old Stubai 4 points, probably considered antique now, but they still work.

The roads are clear as far as Rivington, though no further. Sheephouse Lane has been abandoned to the elements, and is closed to traffic. The first job is to remember how to put the crampons on. People are slithering about all over the place, so it looks like I’m justified in taking the precautions. We’ll do the Pike, up by the Ravine and the Great Lawn, then circle back by Wilcock’s and Dean Wood. A shorter walk than last week’s, then. About five miles and a thousand feet. The light is stunning – crisp and bright – and we should get some good shots.

The way becomes scrunchy and Christmas card-ish very quickly. I recall the insteps require a conscious effort to hit the ice with the rear spikes first, feel them bite, then roll into the front ones, but once we’ve got into the rhythm, it’s like engaging four-wheel drive. What is it about snow that gets us excited? It’s sufficiently rare here, I suppose, but it also adds another dimension to the landscape, turns the familiar into an adventure, and there’s the lovely way it paints blown-out highlights on bare trees. Then there’s the cold, and the feeling of aliveness as we warm up through our exertions in the sharp air.

^{The Ravine, Rivington Terraced Gardens}

During the summer, the terraced garden volunteers had been working on clearing more of the Ravine, and it’s astonishing, the details they’ve uncovered – pools and runnels that have lain hidden for a century. We try a few shots here, but nothing really grabs us. It needs lots of tumbling water, so, we’ll be back after heavy rains. What we’re really anticipating as we climb, is a picture of the Pike, under snow. Along the way we note the old building that was once a public lavatory (abandoned for years as a vandalised abomination) is now re-purposed as a café, which explains the trail of discarded paper cups I’ve been following on the way up.

A glorious day, yes, and one to be enjoyed, but now and then I can’t help fretting over the various trials of my offspring, as they attempt to gain a foothold in the world. Number one son, recently moved out, has been awaiting an Internet connection for a month, and is no nearer a resolution even though he’s already paid for a month’s service – that he’s required to work from home is impacting his job, so he commutes to my place and occupies my study. And number two son, mortgaged to the eyeballs in a two bed starter home, has just found out he needs a new roof, though the survey said everything was just fine. I’m realising parenthood is for life. You never stop worrying, be they five or twenty-five. Indeed, the older they get, the worse it is, because you know you have to close your eyes, let them go, and get on with it.

There are other young men having a fine old time, here, sledging down the Pike. I wonder why they are not at work, or if the world has changed so much, I was a fool to keep going until the age of sixty, that for all those years, there were people half my age having a Beano on the Pike. I don’t know what the secret is, but do not begrudge their obvious fun. I’m only puzzled as to why it took me so long to wise up.

^{Rivington Pike, Winter 2022}

The snow is deeper here as we reach the high point of the walk, at around 1200 ft. The crampons loosen as the boots warm up. A shake of the foot reveals the problem. Tighten the strap and on we go. We walk a little way along the path to Noon Hill, so we can shoot the Pike under snow with a starburst of sun. I wonder briefly then about carrying on to Noon Hill, across the open moor, but that’s a tougher walk than I fancy today, so we stick to plan A, come back to the Pigeon Tower, then down through the terraced gardens.

^{Pigeon Tower, Rivington, Winter 2022}

There are mega-buck four-wheel drives – kings for a day – on the Higher House carpark, which suggests they ignored the road-closed signs on Sheephouse Lane. The road here is like glass, and nearly as hard, but the spikes keep us upright and enable steady progress to Wilcocks, along what resembles, in places, a river of ice. Then we cut for home, along the top of Dean Wood. There’s nothing like the feel of those spikes biting, and they keep you firm in places where you’d ordinairly not be able to stand up! No, now is not the time for a broken leg and A+E.

Then I’m thinking back ten years, to a night in Preston Royal. The ward was like a war zone, the staff clearly knackered, yet kind, and the surgeon with a face that betrayed the weight of the world on his shoulders, and my mother discharged into the dead of night, to die of inoperable cancer. I’d hoped they might let her rest until morning, but they needed that bed for someone they’d a chance of saving. And so it goes.

It’s fine if you’re fit and healthy, but at some point we all need care, even if it’s only for the final few weeks, to see us out. So, for pity’s sake, fellow Brits, wake up. Don’t let’s go the way where a health emergency costs us our house and our life’s savings, and our children their house, and their life savings too, and all so an already rich man, lacking in self consciousness and shame, can indulge his whim for an ocean going yacht, or a doomsday bunker in New Zealand. Don’t let me carry that one into my next novel. I’m looking for the off-ramp into the bliss of Zen, not back into the mire of class warfare.

^{Dean Wood Avenue}

A little after two now, and the sun is creeping low. It’s dead ahead as we walk this avenue of ancient chestnuts, now – such a beautiful stretch, filled with memories of hunting conkers with my children. Pockets full, and still plenty left for all comers, and the squirrels too. I wonder at how quickly the time has flown, and how little of it we have to enjoy the company of our children – though I also recall it doesn’t always feel like that when you’re in the thick of it. Though my boys have left home now, I still collect a few conkers in passing, come the season, just for the sentiment. Anyway, the light is dreamy now, so we chance a shot – late day, winter ambiance – and then again as we walk the brookside path towards Church Meadows.

^{Towards the Church Meadows, Rivington}

Then we’re back to Rivington, and the car, and peeling off the boots. This is such a small beat, and I’ve known it all my life, but it keeps on giving. Whatever bit of green is your part of the world, you will never know any other so well, and so intimately. And that’s a gift.

Now the temperature’s falling, and we’re looking at another sub-zero night, but the Met office says rain and ten degrees come weekend. We have to enjoy these things while we can.

Keep safe.

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Saturday at two.

She’s a neatly-dressed woman, not young. I see her sitting on the same park bench every Saturday, at two. I can’t say exactly when my orbit became synchronised with hers, or why I persist with it now. I could always walk another way to the station. Indeed, I don’t need to walk to the station at all any more. It’s just a habit: catch the train into town, coffee in the corner café. And now her.

What’s most striking is her serene aura. She’s never lost in her phone, like most of us are these days. Sometimes she’s reading a paperback, sometimes she’s feeding the birds. But most of the time she sits and looks out across the parkland, and the pretty little lake. I’ve never spoken to her, not even caught her eye. I walk past, take the train into town, and that’s it.

At first, I was curious. You don’t see many women out on their own. I’ve read that the Internet has turned all the men into perverts. Or at least it’s convinced all the women that all the men are perverts. I don’t want her thinking that about me. But I’m wondering if she ever thinks about me at all, is curious about me, like I’m curious about her, this guy who walks by, every Saturday at two.

I’m not so old I can’t remember the urgent allure of girls, nor the lengths I went to to be with one. You could sit down next to a girl on a park bench in those days and say hello without her calling the cops – well, maybe not the same bench, but the bench opposite, perhaps. Was it that we were all so much younger, and trusting then, still working out what was the right way to enter into the full bloom of being? And somewhere along the way, something went wrong and turned us all into paranoid strangers, fearful of one another.

It was never about sex for me. I wouldn’t have admitted that to other guys, though – guys whose woman-talk never rose above the level of whether so-and-so was a good shag. They didn’t mean it, by the way. Well, not all of them did. That kind of talk used to embarrass me. And now? Well, now the prize would be someone to share a coffee with, someone to come home with, kick off our shoes, make dinner together, and watch TV.

She’s wearing a white shirt-dress today, looks summery and cool, looks like she’s waiting for someone, actually. That’s most likely it. At two-o-five, when I’ve gone by, this guy comes up, and they stroll off arm in arm. Except you wouldn’t arrange a date for two-o-five, would you? It would be two, on the dot. Or am I just over thinking things?

In truth, I don’t know how it goes any more. I met my wife of twenty-five years at work. I can’t remember which of us spoke first. It just sort of happened. It seemed to happen more easily back then. Now it doesn’t. Now you have to go on the Internet and sell yourself. But if you’ve nothing to sell, what then? I was no looker to begin with, and age has hardly improved things. But is that the best way to make a first impression, anyway?

I’ve wondered about saying hello. I mean, that’s still okay, isn’t it? I say hello to other people when I’m out walking, and they say hello back. It’s polite. It’s like saying: I’m a nice person, and you can trust me. And it usually comes with a smile, and you can tell a lot about a person that way. But it needs a bit of eye contact first, and she’s never scanning for it. Her eyes are always in her book, or watching the birds, or admiring the view. So as simple a thing as that might sound, saying hello, it never actually works out.

It would be best to break the habit, I suppose. It’s getting so my Saturday afternoons begin with the tingly anticipation of seeing her in the park, then it all falls flat, and what used to be a pleasant distraction in town suddenly isn’t any more. The train ride, the coffee, maybe a mooch in a bookshop, these things used to be a way of dodging the loneliness. But now they seem only to highlight it, and bring to the fore an aching desire to fix it.

I’m not saying she’s the right person. I mean, who knows? I’d have to talk to her first. But at least the fact I’m attracted to her is a start. Right? Plus, she might be lonely, too, and these Saturday afternoons on a park bench are her way of dealing with that. Maybe she’d like nothing more than for someone to hello. She just never gives that impression. Indeed, that air of serenity speaks of a rock-solid self-containment, and maybe that’s what I’m attracted by – that what she possesses most is the very thing I lack in myself.

Anyway, here we are again, Saturday at two. She must have noticed me. That’s what people do, they recognise patterns. She sits there, same time, same day, and this same guy comes walking by. And if she was at all curious about me, she’d be looking to make eye contact, if only to sound me out as harmless. So, perhaps today’s the day. Here we go: I give her a glance, an opening, so to speak, like I always do. It’s for her to respond, now. I can do no more but, once again, she doesn’t seem to notice me, so I look away, weigh once more the ache in my gut, and ride the train into town.

So,… coffee, in the corner café. I’d thought I was done with all this teenage stuff. I’d thought I was happy on my own, but it turns out I’m still looking for completion in the body and the soul of another, and all that crap. And worse, I also know myself by now, that I’m trapped in this groove, unable to veer left or right to dodge the hurt. And the only way this will work itself out is when I walk by one Saturday, and she’s no longer there. Then I’ll be that free man again, drinking coffee, alone, flicking on his damned phone, but all of that, at least, without this ache in his gut.

Or maybe, just maybe, next Saturday, at two,…

Header image adapted from: here

Footer image adapted from: here

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Out and about – on the West Pennine Classic

Winter Hill, from the climb to Spitler’s Edge – West Pennine Moors

The delivery lady came sooner than expected, but also just in time. She’s a familiar face now, and a cheery soul. With the decline of the high street, our delivery drivers have become the engines of the nation, indeed the saviours of it during Covid lockdowns, yet are still treated appallingly by profit-driven employers who deny even their status as employees. Anyway, she took my picture holding my package as proof of delivery. Job done and she’s on her way.

She’s brought me a new walking jacket, or rather a mid-layer fleece, which was rather thicker than I’d been expecting. But then again, I wasn’t expecting temperatures of minus five this morning when I set out for the West Pennines. I’d worried I might boil in the jacket, but as fate would have it, that wasn’t a problem at all.

Everyone who regularly wanders the Western Pennines will have their own definition of what constitutes the classic route. Mine starts from Rivington, takes in the Pike, and Winter hill, then across Spitler’s Edge to Great Hill, down to White Coppice, then back to Rivington via the Anglezarke reservoir. It’s a longer walk than I’m used to, just under 12 miles, and a couple of thousand feet of ascent – a broad circuit that takes in the higher moorland summits and shows off the very best of the scenery.

The day had warmed to a few degrees below freezing at Rivington, which, at 9:00 a.m, was still in the shadow of the moors. There were golden frosted leaves under foot, and wreaths of mist snaking through the trees. But then we climbed into sunrise through the terraced gardens, and into the calm, clear light of what was suddenly looking like a beautiful winter’s day.

Then we tackled the Pike. The lack of wind was a blessing. It would have been arctic otherwise, and the walk curtailed to something shorter and less exposed. It’s odd, but when the Pike is the main objective of the day, it can have you puffing and halting to admire the view, but when the mind is thinking beyond it, you seem to make the top with half the effort.

Rivington Pike from Rivington Moor

Beyond the Pike lies the morass of Rivington moor, and a steady climb to the masts on Winter hill. But crisp days make the going easier, the bog being mostly frozen. Alpine sticks help probe the way, and keep you steady on the ice. At 1496 ft, Winter Hill is the highest point of the walk, and lots of ice here. One can hardly describe it as an attractive summit, among the transmitters, but with your back to them, the immediate view of the moor, and the northern hill country beyond it is breathtaking.

After the trig point, it’s a sharp drop, into the chilly shadow of the hill, to the pass of Hordern Stoops, where we once again emerge into sunshine, and another long climb to around 1300 feet, on Spitler’s Edge. I was last up this way in the spring a warm, early evening, with the cotton grass bobbing about. Winter presents a much bleaker aspect, of course, and it’s not a day to linger for long, but thus far the new jacket is proving to be something of a miracle, and a very fortuitous delivery.

This long stretch between Winter and Great Hill used to be more of an adventure, along vague paths and peat hags, but it’s increasing popularity over the decades has resulted in it being paved from end to end with gritstone flags recycled from old mills. They once rang to the strike of clog irons, now it’s the hiking boots and the scratching of Alpine sticks. It makes the going much easier and preserves the precious habitat. We brave the surface of the land by day, when the sun shines, but scurry back to our beds to pass these cold nights, nights that embalm the moorland grasses in layers of hoar frost, and render the lonely ways thick with ice. This would be a bad place to be after dark, the cold finding its way into the layers of even the warmest coat. But by day, on days like this, the images will enter our dreams and our memory, to rise in flashes of warm reminiscence in the years to come.

So, Great Hill now for lunch, and views across a pale inversion to the mountains of Cumbria and the Dales. Bowland and Pendle seem so close, we feel we could include them in our day’s loop. Then it’s down to Drinkwaters, and Coppice Stile, where we were only last week, up from Brinscall, and on a completely different kind of day. We take a shot of the thorn tree which we photographed last week, and which is today looking very wintery.

The sun is slipping low, now. Such short days, and I’m conscious of the time. We’ve been on the move for about four hours, and another two to go. At the back of my mind is the self-imposed curfew of not being on the road after lighting up time. We’ll probably have to forgo that one this evening, and run the gauntlet of the SUVs burning the paint off our car and my retinas, with their headlights.

White Coppice

Down to White Coppice, and a chance to photograph the tree I spotted from afar, last week, holding onto its leaves. I had thought it was an oak, but closer inspection reveals it to be a beech, its leaves all coppery, while around it, its neighbours stand bare, fingering sunbeams and casting long shadows. Photographers usually define the golden hour as the last hour before sunset, but in these northern winter months, we can enjoy it for much longer.

Anglezarke Reservoir

Like now, for example, and this mellow light over the Anglezarke Reservoir as we rest before the final push. There’s a bank of cloud coming up, snow forecast for overnight. We grab what we can of it with the camera, drink it down to memory before a gloomy stillness comes on, then it’s a long twilight back to Rivington, frost already settling at the wayside. The day is fading out, but I’m loath to paste it back home, and the Barn looks so inviting, lit up and jolly. Table service now. It’s three years, pre-pandemic, since I last enjoyed its hospitality. The young lady comes to take my order. Six hours of a perfect winter round on the moors, finished off with a hot chocolate, and a toasted tea cake.

Classic! Though I’ll probably be a bit stiff tomorrow.

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A Lone Tree Falls – out now!

A Lone Tree Falls, my fourteenth novel, is now up on Smashwords. My relief at finally nailing this one suggests it may be my last piece of long form fiction for a while. It may also be that my stories were, in part, merely an escape from the workaday life, and now, safely retired, I simply don’t need them any more. Time will tell.

The merit or otherwise of my stories, is for others to judge and for me to accept, but they were at the very least, each of them, written with a mood for something to say. Anyway, it’s available for download here, and from the margin of the page, price free, as usual. It works best if you’re reading on a phone or a pad. Clicking the link will take you to Smashwords, where you’ll see the download options, and the book should open up in your reader.

Like my previous story “Winter on the Hill”, it’s not a hopeful book, at least not in so far as the direction of travel suggested by contemporary world events is concerned. But, also in common with its predecessor, it builds on the idea of getting at a shift of perspective, one that’s always been available down the ages, yet which remains hidden or even secret, but it’s a secret that seems to come looking for you, once you’re open to it. Otherwise, it won’t make sense. It enables the individual at least to step back from the madness we see when we doomscroll on our phones, to dis-identify with it and re-orientate ourselves to a more meaningful purpose. To do otherwise is simply to participate in, and perpetuate, the suffering, not just of ourselves, but others too.

The first week always sees the most downloads, I presume because the book appears on the new releases page, and gets its brief moment in the sun. So, there’s an early peak and then a rapid tail off as we’re covered over by the sedimentary layers built up of the daily slew of new arrivals. If you keep the price free, you can expect some downloads. How many? Well, it varies, and for no reason that’s obvious to me:

My story Push Hands has been up since 2013 and has managed 720 downloads. Saving Grace is my best “seller”, having been up since 2019 and managed 2600. If you set an actual price, even as low as you’re permitted ($0.99) you can expect next to no downloads at all. My story “The Inn at the Edge of Light” is the only story I briefly set a price for, as an experiment. It made $4, so hardly a living. Even after setting it back to free, its performance has been rather poor, racking up only 130 downloads in three years. So, even at peak, downloads are a bit sleepy. Reviews and feedback are also rare, but all told I’m happy with Smashwords. It seems a solid platform, and manages to keep going.

At the moment, I don’t have another story lined up, nothing burning inside of me that wants out. The blog is proving far more meaningful in fitting in with the rhythm of my retired life – the walking, the reading, the observation. And that it enables a more regular contact with other like-minded human beings, via the comments, is far more satisfying than plugging away in isolation at a piece of long-form fiction. That may change in the coming weeks and months, as something takes shape in the subconscious, but I’m not pushing it. Each novel I write is a puzzle that demands a solution. It’s like your crossword, or your Soduko. Once you start, you can’t rest until it’s done, even though there’s no actual point to the exercise beyond your own satisfaction, and perhaps a little dopamine kick when it all comes together.

The best advice I can give to budding writers is, if you like to write, then write, because I think it’s good for the soul, and therefore perhaps benefits you more than anyone else. If it starts doing your head in, or making you miserable, then it’s not working, and you should do something else.

Thanks for listening.

Graeme out.

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Not Andrew

After a long run of wet days, you know the paths will be a quagmire, so good footwear is in order. But on the way out, I pull up at the garage for a bit of petrol, and realise I’ve left my boots at home. I’ve been distracted of late, the memory having reached capacity – one more thing in, like remembering to put the bin out, and out pops something else, like remembering to pick up the walking boots. By the time I’ve gone back for them, the time will be too short for a decent walk, so, what to do? A change of plan is required, which is why I’m now wandering Eccleston’s Grove Mill, otherwise known as Bygone Times.

The Grove has been around, in one form or another, since the seventeenth century, but finally called a halt to manufacturing in 1980. It now houses one of the biggest collections of junk, antiques, bric-a-brack and up-cycled what-nottery you can imagine, as well as several ghosts. On your first visit you pay £3.00 on the door to get life membership, and a little gold card. On subsequent visits, you just flash your card like a VIP, and you’re waved in for free.

I like to pop in now and then on the hunt for broken clocks. I’ve had an eye on an Acctim pendulum clock for a while, and I’m tempted to finally take the plunge today, if it’s still there. It is. Closer inspection, though, reveals it’s not a true mechanical movement, but “electronically assisted” and therefore beyond my competence if it proves to be a fixer-upper. Plus, at the asking price, I’d expect it to be working, and what I really want is a project, for a tenner.

Furniture, books, vinyl records, old tools, maps, a curious and fantastically hairy tweed kilt jacket with waistcoat, but minus the kilt, walking sticks, paintings, musical instruments, garden ornaments, pot-pourri, fine china, cracked china, wool, art supplies, ancient postcards, Victoriana, Art Deco, sixties chic, seventies sideburns and bell-bottoms,… it’s all here, and more. I can only manage a half hour before my head starts to spin.

Then I see Andrew.

Andrew is lying on his back amid an assortment of clock bits, springs, wheels, pendulums, empty cases, screwdrivers, hacksaws, oily bits, rusty bits, broken bits and sad bits. Gingerly, we lift him clear from this detritus and have a look for signs of life. He has a nice looking two-train movement, by Perivale, which means a passing strike on the half hour, and he counts the hours at the top. He has a platform escapement instead of a pendulum, and I’ve been after one of those for a while. They’re expensive to replace, and hard to source, when bust, but this one looks okay. His case is in good nick, but the glass is missing, and there’s no key, so we can’t give it a turn and see if he’s ticking.

Date? Late fifties to mid-sixties? Perivale’s Middlesex factory had links with Bentima, another English clockmaker, and, like the Grove Mill, was a milestone in domestic manufacturing, its rise, its decline and its final extinction.

The rear plate is thick with a gummy oil which doesn’t bode well, but for the price, Andrew’s worth a punt, and will be interesting to tinker with on rainy days. Often, a good strip and clean is all that’s required. Why do we call him Andrew? Well, it says so on the dial. Okay then, Andrew, mate. You’re coming home with me. He smells of fags, but we’ll soon cure him of that.

At home, we borrow a key from Norman, another of my clocks. (All my clocks have names). We give him a cautious wind. He’s hesitant at first, like someone woken up after a long sleep, then off he goes, and settles to a lively ticking. Goodness knows when he last ran, but he seems keen to make up for lost time. He keeps good time, too, bongs when he should, and with a rich resonance. There’s not much wrong with him. A new glass off Ebay, cleaning and oiling, and he’ll be as good as new.

Some people rescue puppies, or cats, or birds, or hedgehogs. I rescue old clocks, not your posh country house type clocks, more the clocks that might once have sat on the mantle-piece of your grandma’s house, and kept the time of an ordinary kind of living, the kind of clocks that were practical, humble, reliable, didn’t need batteries or plugging in, and were not made to be thrown away. These are the forgotten clocks, the clocks the high priests of clock mending dismiss in favour of the luxury end, and they charge the earth to get things going. So your grandma’s clock ends up in the bin, and one by one they’re disappearing from the world for want of a bit of attention.

But not Andrew.

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Third sycamore from the left

_{Drinkwater’s Farm – December 2022}

Lunch today is chicken and mushroom soup, and a seeded roll. Our venue is the ruin of Drinkwater’s farm, third sycamore from the left. It is my favourite table, shared, no doubt, with many others, but not today. Today we have the ruins, indeed, so far, the moor all to ourselves.

We’ve come up from Brinscall’s Lodge Bank, which is a long-winded way of doing it, but it makes for a more attractive walk along the Goit valley than the direct ascent from White Coppice. The wooded section, along the Goit, is mostly winter-bare now, just the occasional beech aflame in red and orange, against a background of misty, mysterious gloom.

On the way up, I spied turkeys under makeshift cover, as protection from avian flu, which is hitting Lancashire pretty hard at the moment. There will be a shortage of the birds come Christmas, just as there is already a shortage of eggs. More worrying, though, is the ongoing devastation to the wild bird population. Although naturally occurring among birds, the severity of this outbreak is pointing to our abuse of the natural world, in particular the factory farming of birds, and a wider breakdown of our ecosystems.

Anyway, we’re looking for winter colour today, looking for compositions along routes I must have scoured with the camera countless times. But there’s always something new – a different light, a different angle, a different mood. The bright-eyed holly is in berry now, and the gorse – somewhat confused – is half asleep for winter, yet also half flowering for spring. The bracken, sometimes reaching seven feet high in summer, has now died back to piles of rusty straw, and the mosses, and lichens are a lively green. But it’s mostly the shapes of trees that fascinate at this time of year. Shorn of foliage, their limbs twist and twine, gesturing like dancers in expressive pose.

From the Brinscall woods, we came up by way of the track from the ruins of Goose Green farm, a place that used to double as the Green Goose, being licensed in olden times to sell ale to farmers. What yarns must have been shared in that place, now just an outline of stones in the swelling earth. This sinewy path runs south, is modestly elevated along the line of the Brinscall fault and punctuated by gnarled trees, some of which have now fallen. One of the last before White Coppice took our eye as its limbs, coiled and bent, indicated the way.

_{Goit Valley – White Coppice}

Then it was the moor, more shades of rust, and silent under a uniform blue grey sky. Out across the plain, to the west, there was the dense line of an atmospheric inversion, but the plain itself was mostly clear. It’s a grey day, rather cold, a fine rain blowing in from the east. At the ruins of Coppice Stile house, just a featureless tumulus of rubble, now, we tried to do justice to the wizened old thorn tree. A shy sun peeped through momentarily and helped lend some contrast. I seem to be visiting familiar trees more often than I do summits these days.

_{Thorn Tree, Coppice Stile}

Then it was on to Drinkwaters, to the sycamores, and lunch. Great Hill is tempting, and it feels wrong to skip it, but we’ll leave that for another time. The days are short now, time pressing, and I am sticking to my resolve not to be on the road after lighting up time. The higher set LED headlights on SUV’s have long been painful and blinding to me, and to many others, according to reports. And most cars these days seem to be of the SUV variety. The only solution, I suppose, is to get an SUV myself.

“Excuse me. Is that the Round loaf, over there?”

A passing walker. We hill types are none of us really strangers to one another, and gel at once when in our natural environment. The Round Loaf – a huge Bronze Age burial, is prominent on the skyline. The guy is interested in routes, is not familiar with the Western Pennines, but is keen to find his way around its antiquities. There are routes from this side, but vague, and prone to bog. We discuss options. He will try from the Rivington side, another time, from where the going is easier. We discover a shared interest in the lost farms, as named on the early OS maps. Then he’s on his way, up Great Hill, most likely never to be met again.

_{Great Hill}

I take photographs, wide angle to soak up what little light there is, now. I never know what the camera has got, and can spend many a pleasant hour, afterwards, post-processing in the digital darkroom, teasing out what I thought I saw, or revelling in what the camera saw, and I did not. Drinkwater’s is effortlessly photogenic whatever the season, or the weather.

We begin our return to Brinscall along the track by Brown Hill, noting the line of shooting butts as we go, these having been cobbled together from the remains of drystone walls. There were dubious claims from the shooting fraternity, earlier in the year, that avian flu had not been detected in game birds, so there was no need, they said, to curtail their usual post Glorious 12th jamboree. But the situation overtook them and, with a little unexpected help from BREXIT many shoots were indeed called off.

_{Shooting butt, Brinscall Moor}

We pick up the terminus of Well Lane, a short but steep drive up from Brinscall. There are always a few cars here, people mostly emptying their dogs on the moor. A short detour brings us to Ratten Clough, which has the distinction of being the best preserved of the lost farms, and a moody place at the best of times. But, unlike Drinkwater’s, I always struggle to get a good composition here. We prowl around for a bit, try some shots, but nothing has a definite tingle to it. It doesn’t matter, it’s just good to be out, and feeling warm, even on a cold day like this. It also saves on heating the house.

_{Ratten Clough, Brinscall Moor}

December 2022, and coming up on two years retired, now. I remember what it was I used to do for a living, but haven’t a clue how I did it any more. It was remarkably easy to let it all go. Writing, reading, walking, photography – these are much better ways to spend one’s time.

So now it’s down through the Brinscall woods again, to connect with the Lodge Bank, and the car. Boots off, and a cup of tea before we make the drive home. There’s an ancient duck comes to say hello, a long time resident, scrounging for seed. I hope it avoids the flu.

Five miles round, and around 650 feet of ascent.

https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=14/53.6729/-2.5632&layers=C

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