Straight lines

The canal locks, Appley Bridge

A short run out today, to Appley Bridge, and the little car park down by the canal. A week of storms has finally blown itself out and the full moon has ushered in a period of calmer, brighter weather. The little blue car hasn’t been out for weeks, and she only just started, on the last dregs of the battery this morning. But she’s perky enough now, and enjoyed the familiar run along the twisty little lanes through Wrightington.

As we descend the long hill from Dangerous Corner, into the village, we pass Skull House Lane, and the old stories come back to me. There’s a coincidence here, too, since we were only talking about the Arthurian connection to the region in our last piece. As the name suggests, there is a house with a skull in it, and various stories attached. Some tell of the civil war, a time when priests were hunted down and killed, others go further back to the battles of King Arthur, which we Lancastrians insist were fought along the banks of the Douglas. As with most things of this sort, the truth is impossible to get at, meanwhile the skull becomes its own story. It’s called Charlie, by the way – even though modern analysis suggests it’s the skull of a woman.

I’ve not used this carpark before, and I’m partly checking it out before meeting a friend here for another adventure, in a few weeks time. It’s tucked away a bit, past the little cottages that make up the Canal Row, but it’s a decent spot for a rendezvous. The plan today is to walk the canal as far as Parbold, then return along Wood Lane, to the Fairy Glen. I used to live in Parbold, and would walk this route from the other end, so it’ll be interesting to see how much of it I remember, how much of it has changed.

The first thing that strikes me is that the towpath seems freshly laid with grit, and is in superb condition. The immediate environs aren’t the best, however, with the towering chemical tanks of the bituminous  felt works peering ominously over the treetops, but we soon leave those behind. We talked about the soul of a landscape in the last piece, and I’m thinking about that again today, about what it is that makes a landscape special.

Appley Bridge has a long history of industry, some of it now derelict, and overgrown, some of it sparkling new. Its various encroaches into the countryside do rob the locale of a sense of escape into another dimension. But is the soul of a landscape purely about the absence of a human presence? I don’t think so. An unobtrusive cottage nestled, sympathetically, on a hillside can add something to a scene, even rescue it from desolation. But what is “unobtrusive”? What is “sympathetic”? And are these merely subjective notions?

This is one of the most attractive stretches of the Leeds Liverpool canal. But it’s at its best where the straight lines disappear, say where the waterway takes a bend or the lines sweep up over the beautifully constructed bridges. I dare-say we wouldn’t build bridges like that today. We’d just lay down some reinforced concrete in a single span, all straight lines and utility. But then I suppose the old navigators would have done the same, if they’d had access to the same technology.

There are several barges moored up, some of them little more than rusting hulks, sagging towards the stern as the murky brown water gets in. In the summer months, a houseboat might seem an attractive proposition, but seeing them in winter knocks the romance out of them for me.

Bridge number 40, Leeds and Liverpool Canal, Parbold

We walk as far as bridge number 39, at which point we leave the canal and head up the little Chapel Lane to Wood Lane. This much should be familiar to me, but it’s over thirty years since I walked it, and don’t remember it at all. At the junction with Wood Lane, we turn right and head back towards Appley Bridge. The lane is metalled some of the way, giving access to farms and remote residences.

Like the canal section, Wood Lane is very straight and, same as by the canal, we’ve had shouty signs wagging their judgmental fingers at us. Bright and rectangular. Straight lines and sharp corners. Thus far we’ve had: KEEP OUT/PRIVATE/CLEAN UP AFTER YOUR DOG/DO NOT TAKE WOOD FROM THIS WOODLAND/ NO FOOTPATH/ NO RIGHT OF WAY.

The lane ends at the attractive dwelling of Gillibrand House, and continues as a green way. At first glimpse, it appears to have been claimed by a private, gated drive. Without our OS maps to confirm a right of way, this might prove discouraging of further exploration, and I admit to a moment of doubt here, but then the kissing gate reveals itself and on we go.

Logging and forestry is much in evidence from here on, with paths churned to bog by heavy vehicles. More notices shout at us, telling us to keep out, and not to climb on the log-piles. Then just as we are tiring of ever finding some soul, the way opens into meadows that have the looks of posh landscaping about them.

Here there’s a lone thorn tree worth a shot, but the upright post next to it speaks again of straight lines, and I feel the scene would be better without it. Would it be deceitful to clone it out, do you think? Then, up on the skyline, we have the back of Parbold Hall. In the 1790’s, this was home to Thomas Eccleston, the man who drained Martin Mere. More recently it was the home of Sir Peter Moores, son of the founder of Littlewoods Football Pools. It was a wreck when he took it on in the late 1950’s, and it owes much of its present glory to his care and investment. It went on sale in 2012 for around 9.5 million, and is currently home to local tycoon Martin Ainscough, former High Sheriff of Lancashire. It’s worth noting that the estates surrounding such big houses as these tend to have a rounded, curving quality about them. They are like nature, but more manicured.

Parbold Hall

So anyway, now we’re down to the Fairy Glen, a scrap of ancient woodland that follows the course of Sprodley Brook. It suffers somewhat from its own attractiveness, its proximity to suburbia, and a name that brings more than the usual problems for a natural habitat. There are reports of its informal Disneyfication with little fairy doors and glitter (as well as litter) being strewn about, all of which further add to the stresses of encroaching balsam, knot weed and giant hog weed the volunteer wardens have to deal with.

I used to know a song about straight lines. How did it go again:

Finally, the footpath picks up the backs of houses, and leads us down to the busy main road, opposite Skull House Lane. This returns us to the canal and the little blue car. I’m not sure if we solved anything with our ruminations on straight lines, but it was good to catch up with the area again. About four and a quarter miles round, six hundred or so feet of up and down, and mostly easy going.

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The seat of desolation

To the hill walker, the vast agricultural plains of Western Lancashire have, at first sight, an unremitting bleakness about them. Seest thou yon dreary Plain, forlorn and wilde, The seat of desolation,… as Milton so eloquently put it. But my journal reminds me how, three years ago, in the month of January alone, I had walked fifty miles of their unimaginative, and geometrically regular ways. We were nudging a hundred thousand dead by then, losing thousands to COVID every day, and restrictions on movement were very tight. We were allowed outdoors only locally, for exercise. Thus, the plain, being where I’ve lived in exile for thirty-five years, was all I had, so what little of it there was, I was having it to the hilt.

Finney lane, Croston Moss

In exploring its options over the years, I’ve discovered interest in isolated trees, in the occasional, seasonal lakes that form after heavy rains, and in the broad sky. But during COVID, it was the stump of a fallen tree with which I established a particular kinship, for no more reason than it invited a man to sit down and pass the time of day. It lay a few yards off the path, in the corner of a vast meadow, and was a good place to settle with a flask of tea. With miles of flat all around, it afforded a sense of escape from the daily doom-scroll.

We had no idea then which way the world was going to go. I had yet to be called for vaccination, and I feared for the adequacy of our desperately under-funded health services, which always seemed only a matter of days from collapse. I imagined those who were cooped up in cities must be going nuts, but the dreary plain and my new-found friend, this seat of desolation, granted some perspective, and even enabled one to see the upsides. After all, the hoarders of toilet rolls had been sated, the supermarkets had worked out how to keep us fed, we had established friendly relations with the local farm-shops, we were still permitted to buy wine, and we were saving a fortune on petrol!

Seasonal Flooding, Croston Moss

But when things began to open up again, my old friend was forgotten. There were other places whose acquaintance I was anxious to renew, and it’s only recently I returned with a flask of tea for old time’s sake. But I discovered we were now separated by an electric fence. It was not, after all, a public stump. I had been trespassing. Our friendship had been illicit, and was now forbidden.

While I have never been particularly fond of this largely ruined landscape, even here, the openness, and the few corners of wild it offers, worked more magic throughout those pandemic years than might ever be contained in an entire blister-pack of Prozac. Open spaces and unfettered access to them are important to us, if we realise it or not. And we realise it most when they are suddenly denied us, by wire, by fence, by the threat of development, and when the meagre allotment of permitted ways become channelled along uninteresting ginnels, with vast tracts of private property on either side.

Croston Moss

The nature of our relationship with a landscape, and our denial of access to it by the perversion of private ownership, has always been a personal bugbear. It started early, as a kid, when I was ejected from a meadow at the toe end of a farmer’s boot. I was doing no harm, but he was bigger than me, and had the terrifying demeanour of a raging bull. Others would have accepted their guilt at the trespass, and been sheepish about it, but I’ve always held that it was him who was on the wrong side of what was morally correct, that he only picked on me because he was bigger, and I was just this kid with no power, and no voice which, metaphorically speaking, is what enables all private ownership of what should be a collective landscape.

I trust the farmer, the landed mi’lord, or whatever, would at least spare me their boot nowadays. Instead, they resort to electric wires, they take down the footpath signs to sow confusion, and they threaten us with legal challenges we have not the pockets to outwit in the courts. The utilitarian use of land does not invite casual observation, and we who claim a Romantic or a mystical connection with nature, are often horrified by what we see being done to it under the stewardship of private money, but also by what we feel when we walk the land – or rather by the fact we feel nothing, because the soul of it has already been routed.

There were stories told, long ago, of how the Romano British warrior we know as Arthur, fought four of his twelve legendary battles against the Saxons, along the banks of the River Douglas, not far from here. There are legends too of Lancelot and Excalibur, of giants and mermaids and Merlin, and of the Faerie. But they’re gone now, flushed out to sea, pumped out when they pulled the plug on the old Martin Mere, drained the land and straightened the Dougie in the seventeenth century, all in the name of improvement. But improvement is a subjective term, and more often than not we end up paying a heavy price for it.

Croston Moss

All of which is to say, if you’re blessed with a local footpath network, do get out there and walk it, because walking it puts the soul back in. And when the footpath signs disappear, report them, so others might come too and follow in your footsteps. There’s not much I can do about that electric wire for now, but I give thanks anyway to my old friend, and raise a cup of tea in its honour. They tend to rotate land use here, so I guess the wire will be gone next year, and then I’ll be able to resume my ramblings,… from the seat of desolation.

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Out and about – Winter on the Hill

Rivington Pike

A good covering of snow, followed by rain, then a hard freeze and sunshine, draws me back to the moors. The roads don’t look to have had much grit, with plenty of frost still lurking in the shady bits, causing me to wonder how that particular budget is holding up. But we make it safely to Rivington, where conditions are perfect, bright and crisp, a crunchy snow kind of day. We take the route up the terraced gardens, by way of the ravine, then onto the moor along George’s lane, and over the Pike.

From my childhood bedroom window, I could see the wide expanse of the West Pennines, from Great Hill, to Smithills Moor, Rivington Pike in the middle. I would train a telescope on it and watch people beetling up and down. Barely a minute goes by without someone visiting the top, rain or shine. Alas, things like school and work interfered with the ability to explore the moors whenever I liked. Weekends and a meagre allotment of holidays were all we had, or sometimes, long summer evenings at a pinch, when I graduated from push-bike to motorcycle, then an old banger of a car.

Though I moved away with marriage, and lost that view, the commute brought me under the shadow of the moors every day, so I was still able to maintain their acquaintance, albeit from the window of a moving vehicle, usually in heavy traffic. Knowing them in all their seasons and their moods, you become possessive about them. And, even though you know they are also beloved of millions, you’re certain no one else sees or feels them quite the same way you do. Of course this means that any sudden change to them, indicative of the malign presence of “development”, you take it personally.

I imagine, as the towns around here began to industrialise, and life became more complex, and personal time almost none existent, lots of souls down the ages will have looked up, seen the serene emptiness of the moors rising beyond the chimney-pots and glimpsed in them another world, another way to be. Sundays were all those people had, and all too frequently poor access, and what little they had was granted begrudgingly by those who claimed ownership. Thus, they became a battleground of trespass, and a spawning ground, too, for the early socialist movements, being recognised as places where a working man, treated like a dog all week could restore his dignity. Obviously, I mean here the way low status dogs used to be treated in the old, pre anthropomorphic days.

Retirement, and the Countryside and Rights of Way Act brings the freedom to explore this world whenever I want. I wondered if it would wear thin, but it hasn’t. Any reasonably unspoiled uplands will do. I just happen to live near these.

Noon Hill

“Do you come up here a lot?” asks the guy.

It’s a young bloke, thirties I guess, friendly. I’m tucking into soup on the summit of Noon Hill, taking in the view. It feels warm in the sun, though the temperature has remained sub-zero all day. I tell him I come up as often as I can. And him? He lives down in Horwich, walks up with his dog every day. It’s one of those butcher’s dogs, a big, jolly beast with a tennis ball in its mouth and strings of drool either side. It’s enjoying the frozen conditions, the snow, the ice,… I’m wondering how dogs stop their paws from going numb in the snow.

I’m wondering too how this guy, in his prime, working age and all that, has arranged his life so he can do this every day, a good two or three hours round from Horwich. It would be impolite to ask, of course, and three years out of work myself, I realise I’m losing touch with the now mysterious ways of that world. Some even seem to command a decent salary doing everything from their phones. However it’s done, it’s different now to the way it was when I had my telescope trained on those hills.

There were still mines and mills, then, and nobody was living in tents. Even the destitute had a roof. The school bell, the factory hooter, the clocking machine ruled the rhythm of my days, and my tunnel to this level of freedom was a long time digging. I have to turn a blind eye to much of the way things are now, those things beyond my purview at least, which is most of them, if I want to remain serene in disposition. So we look instead to the hills, which change less, and where you can still lay your imagination across a broad landscape, like a net across the ocean, for a deeper catch of life’s riches.

Me and the guy, we find the common ground, pass the time of day, then off he goes, across the snowy wastes towards the Pike. I’ve just come that way, burst through the ice in a few places, where it covers the bog, but managed to keep my feet dry. The spikes kept picking up snow, which turned to frozen blocks under my feet, and had to be levered off with a pen-knife every couple of hundred yards. He’s not wearing spikes. No one else I’ve seen is wearing them either, and they all seemed to be managing okay. No skittering about, or broken limbs. Indeed, on the Pike, there was a bunch of fashionista-chicks in glitzy trainers, as I lumbered up looking like a bedraggled Scott of the Antarctic in tatty mountain gear. I guess I’m just reliving other days, days of higher summits, now played out on the nursery slopes. That’s another blessing of the hills of home – when everything else feels distant, they’ve got your back. They can still deliver a cracking day out and, though you’ve walked them a thousand times, they’ll still show you something new.

Leverhulme’s Bridge

Today that “something new” is the winter sunlight, spilling through the arch of Leverhulme’s bridge, as we make our way back though the terraced gardens. I’ve walked this way a thousand times and never seen it as dramatic as that before.

There’s something about a snow-day that makes you feel good to be alive. There’s the novelty of it, I suppose, but a good fall of snow has a way of covering up our sins, too, of smoothing over the scars we’ve inflicted on the landscape, simplifying the world to something more elemental. We rush out, feel the invigorating sting of it, kick up some snow crystals, build a snowman, go crazy on a toboggan ’till our fingers freeze, then scuttle back to our central heating before the night comes on, and the frost descends, and there we slowly unravel the day, play it back in slower time, see what it has to say.

About five miles round 900 feet of ascent

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White Crow

White Crow old friend, pray tell me
what is the puzzle piece I lack?
For anyone with common sense,
knows all you crows are black.
Yet there you are, pristine in white,
a twinkle in your eye.
The wind invoked you long ago and, yes,..
I do remember why.

Black crows were flocking everywhere,
the colour of my days,
but each I tried to close with
would shrug and fly away.
Then circling back, they’d scornful swoop,
and peck upon my head.
There is no point in anything,
those dullard beasts all said.

So I asked the wind that bore them,
was there not another way?
And a white crow was its answer,
though why, it would not say.
Oh, how often I’ve rejected
the truth of what I’ve seen,
swore white in fact was really black,
that you were but a dream.

So what am I to make of things
when you keep on coming back?
And what fool shall believe me,
when we know all crows are black?
Are we to keep it secret, then?
Is that to be the deal?
In exchange for my discretion,
you’ll show me what is real?

Then gladly, if the world shall press,
I’ll firmly answer back:
that anyone with common sense
knows all the crows are black.
Then, though those crows shall scornful swoop,
they shall not peck my head.
I’ll hold you safe within in my heart,
and think of you instead.

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Out and about – other worlds are available

Around the Anglezarke Reservoir

A cold night, and the bed warms slowly, only reaching snug as the sun comes up. Always the way in winter. We stick a foot out from under the duvet, and it reports back the house is like a fridge, that we should stay in bed. The boiler clicks on at eight thirty, but it’ll take an hour to take the chill off, and then it cuts out at noon – back on at teatime. It’s an old house, and in spite of the insulation we’ve stuffed into its various nooks and crannies, it soon loses its heat.

There’s condensation on the windows of a morning, and mould behind the bookcase that needs treating and over-painting. Or better still, I shall tack a sheet of polystyrene there, which ought to fix it. Economise on the heating, and you just end up spending more on redecoration. However, at least I can do something about it. The house is mine, so it’s my job. But in a world where you rely on an evasive landlord, and you daren’t run your heating at all for fear of the cost, seriously mouldy houses are becoming the norm. It’s unhealthy, and it’s depressing, but at this stage of national decline, it’s where we appear to be. We just have to get on with it. Other worlds are available, of course, but we seem to have taken a wrong turning somewhere, and lost sight of them.

The met office finally spurs us to action with reassurances of a sunny day, and the camera is keen for a walk. An hour later, we’re pulling up on the car park, above the Anglezarke Reservoir, and stepping out into a wind that has razor blades in it. We’re feeling a bit jaded, actually, after, the night before, watching a dramatisation of the Post Office Horizon scandal, something that’s taken twenty years to become an overnight sensation, which is as much of a scandal as the scandal itself.

It speaks to the power of a good story, that it can raise a million signatures on a petition overnight, at least if you can get it aired on a premium channel. But it also speaks to the sort of world we have become accepting of, the sort of story we tell about ourselves, of a powerlessness to bring us back to a place of caring and of service to others. The media turns a blind eye, apparently accepting there will be innocent casualties of corporate malfeasance, inevitable sacrifices to this eternal scramble for loot.

The reservoir is black and there are white breakers on it, a wild wind stirring the bare trees. There are lots of people about, expensive cars on the car-park, expensive dogs strutting their stuff in fancy jackets. We set the camera up to cope with harsh lighting, and go in search of beauty as a salve, try to prove another world is still possible – indeed is still out there, somewhere, that we need only look for it.

The traditional sub-post office – heart of rural England

I wonder if the Post Office scandal has struck so deep into the nation’s psyche because it was an assault on the sort of England some still think exists, or to which halcyon days they think we might yet return, this being circa nineteen fifty – the village green, a line of cosy thatched cottages, a Post Office, and dear old Jonesey, lifelong native of this parish, sub post-master, benign interface with officialdom, doler out of postage stamps, pensions and postal orders.

But officialdom was subcontracted to the private sector, and the suits gave our Jonesey a computer in the name of efficiency, but one they knew couldn’t add up. And instead of admitting that, when the discrepancies in accounting occurred, they told us our beloved Jonesey was a crook, paraded him in handcuffs, hauled him off to prison, took his house, his life savings, and ruined his reputation. Twenty years later, old Jonesey is a broken old man, still waiting for redress, for apology, for recompense. Some of the old Joneseys have died, never having cleared their names. A union official I knew said the law exists for one purpose, and that is to protect the rich against the complaints of the rest of us, who have no such protection. I thought it was a cynical view, but it’s hard to argue against.

Around the Bullough plantation.

It’s difficult to focus down on beauty, even though it’s a gorgeous morning. I keep thinking about all those lives ruined while the Post Office sought to protect its image, its trusted “brand”. I knew another guy who chucked his job in, and went to run a sub-post office in an idyllic little village in Cornwall. He hated it and went back to the day job. It’s as well, or he might have ended up bankrupt and jailed, his dream turned to his worst nightmare.

We press on, take the path up by the old Bullough reservoir, which I don’t recall ever walking before. It makes a pleasant change from the waterboard track. We could circle back around the plantation from here, but first we take a look at a familiar trio of trees, try a shot into that brilliant sun. The gorse is yellowing, the wind is howling off the water. Hands and face are raw.

We’re barely a mile and a half out, but it’s one of those days you cannot fight, best to give in and head for an early lunch at Rivington. But we discover Rivington is bursting at the seams with fellow crumblies, queued out of the Barn doors. I’ll be a while getting served in there, so drive home instead, spend the price of lunch on bits and bobs to tackle that mould behind the bookcase.

Around the Anglezarke Reservoir

Still thinking about that Horizon scandal, you never know when the ba$&ards are going to get you. And when I walk into a cold house, I’m reminded, they’ve already had a significant piece of most of us. We settle down under a rug, snug with a hot-water-bottle, read some blogs till the heating clicks back on at tea time. Five minutes doom-scrolling shows a world at its worst, but other versions are available, and it’s the bloggers who can point the way, so keep blogging, you bloggers. Another world is definitely out there. We just have to keep telling its story.

About three miles, six hundred feet of ascent.

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A divine paradox

You saved my life, I think,
it’s fair to say,
breathed something back
into the hollow shell
of crushed beginnings.
Thus it was, a wilderness of grief
was rendered navigable.
And though it proved an empty love,
it was a road of sorts to walk,
a cindered path, travelled barefoot,
and alone.
But it rendered me at least functional,
no longer shrinking from the sun.

It’s half a century now, good as,
but I still think of you.
It was for you, I realise, belatedly,
I gained my feet,
painted back the smile,
found meaning in solitude.

When I saw you for the last time,
you looked through me.
I was not there, nor am I still,
yet still not quite able
to let you go, though go you must.

Go then, and with my gratitude
for a memory, never sullied, ever young,
and, as such, the divine paradox
of loving, yet never really
knowing you.

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Out and about – five hundred miles?

Croston Moss

I’d like to be able to say I don’t count the miles, but I do – just an end of year flip through the walking journal, and a quick totting up. About three hundred and twenty last year, same as the year before. That’s small fry, in a company of walkers for whom a thousand is more like it. But it’s where I am, and happy with it. I had thought I might get it up to five hundred this time, but it was not to be. They’ve been quality miles, though, in spite of occasionally appalling weather. I have brought home some golden memories of the Lakes, Bowland, the Dales, and my own patch, the West Pennines. Any ambitions for the New Year? Five hundred miles? Nah. Probably another three hundred or so, and hopefully many a gem along the way, but I’d like some of them to be in Scotland.

So, we defy the gloomy weather today with a short one, around the moss at Croston, all of it firm going on well established farm tracks. Meanwhile, the meadow ways are sinking under a watery mud, and great puddles are rising as the ancient mere that once stretched from here to the coast, sneaks back. Acreage, once rich in produce, is lost to marsh, encroaching season by season. The farmers make busy clearing ditches, which are brim top, now, but the Environment Agency no longer pumps them out into the Douglas. Crops rot in the wet.

Croston Moss

It’s a glowery sort of day, a thick, smokey sky, and a village choking on the poison of burning wood, and whatever it has been treated with. Wood’s much more expensive than gas or electricity, but only if you pay for it. One character has his front garden stacked high with pallets, and sets the theme. The finney’s are stripped of deadwood, and there are even those who watch the tides for planks, and tree trunks blown in by gales. The trees, they descend upon like the carcases of whales, with chainsaws. Those wood-burners, once for fancy, are proving a godsend these winters of energy poverty, at least for the thrifty who have them. I suspect many a stick of unwanted furniture and old window frames, paint and all, have gone up the chimney too! My sense of smell generally disappears over the winter months.

Far Moss

It’s a week since I was out around Turton and the reservoirs, but it feels like an age and the legs are stiff, but as the air clears over the meadows, and we fill the lungs, I begin to feel more human, more energetic, and manage to shake off the house-life blues. It’s spitting with rain, about an hour before sunset, though we have not seen the sun for days now, while of the rain, we have seen plenty. I picked the camera up half-heartedly, not relishing the poor light, and thinking I know all the shots on this route, but I’m glad I brought it. Even on days like this, there’s always something worth a picture*. Soft light, soft colours, de-saturated greens, meadows under water, tractor trails like giant scribbles in the the rich, black, glutinous earth, expressive trees against blue-grey Lancashire skies, reflections in vast puddles,…

The old stables – grade 2 listed, falling down

Being mostly firm, it’s a popular route for dog walkers, joggers and cyclists, though the far moss is barred to the latter. There has been some gentrification of formerly derelict properties, and very nice too, but ruined by shouty notices: PRIVATE; NO SHOOTING; NO FOOTPATH; NO ACCESS; NO UNNECESSARY LINGERING TO ADMIRE MY VIEW. All right, all right, we get it. I made the last one up, but such is the feeling conjured when money descends on what is god given, and drives the rest of us off with metaphorical baseball bats.

But linger, I do. Usually I’m self-conscious with a camera when people are about. Most will snap away with a phone quite happily, it’s mainstream now, but a camera? They are becoming a little “niche”. Plus, I raise the viewfinder and people pop up from nowhere, wandering into frame, so I forfeit the shot, continue on my way, pretending to be normal. It is as if I am disturbed, about to engage in a bit of urgent alfresco micturation. But no, officer, I’m just this guy out for a walk. Except how can one be normal, without a dog? Or without headphones, to drown out the un-stimulating silence of the countryside.

So, yes, today I linger. I’m taking a picture, officer. Get over it.

Of course, these dialogues are with myself. Nobody actually cares, and that I even mention them shows I am not living my life entirely through my own eyes. That’s a lecture I preach so often to others, I fear I have neglected to take a look at myself.

Remains of the maize crop

Fields of maize are the most depressing at this time of year. After cropping, and lying bare all winter the run-off is dispiriting, like the soil is bleeding away, but these are strange times. Upside down times. And the approach to agriculture here, as in most places, is somewhat industrial. Still, there are moments of beauty. It depends on the light, and on the sky. Indeed, I often rely upon the sky to beautify the moss, which to my eye always looks forlorn, knackered, as a landscape. Like poor Boxer in Animal Farm, it has been worked to death, and is now sold off for the last dregs of utility that can be squeezed or ground out of it.

On the home front, my good lady tests negative for COVID, though she has emerged looking as tired as the moss looks today. It seems to have passed me by, for which I am grateful. Five hundred miles, here we come then.

• Indeed, it’s always worth a shot. The header picture got an unexpected gold star when I put it up on Youpic. Makes me feel like I’m back at primary school.

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On the edge of light

We begin 2024 with COVID. Not me, not yet anyway. My good lady brought it home, after visiting careless relatives who had forgotten it existed. They had attended what we would once have termed a super-spreader event and, though they were feeling ill, did not think to test. Since it’s not killing as many of us as it once was, there seems now a blasé contempt for it, for news of it, and for the concerns of those still sensitive to the risks of catching it. Indeed, it seems lower in the pecking order than the common cold, that it should be considered a pleasure to receive it from others and bad form to complain about it when you do. Yet it remains incredibly infectious, and reactions to it vary – mostly mild, but some severe, and you never can tell which hand you’ll be dealt. At the very least, it is extremely inconvenient. Unlike those who gave it to us, we’ll be isolating until the all clear.

I’ve had it before, caught it from a near empty pub in Hurst Green, last February – I suspect from a coffee cup that had merely been shown the dishwasher. It was not a pleasant experience, several days of feeling unwell, a further seven of increasing frustration at the isolation, then a month getting my legs back, or possibly longer, given my performance on the hills last summer (my excuse anyway). But we’ll see.

So, what to do while waiting for it to catch up, I mean other than seeing to my good lady’s needs? Well, writing, I suppose, a bit of artwork, a bit of reading, a bit of chasing my tail through the metaphors of shadows and light. And doom-scrolling, of course. It’s always hard to resist doom-scrolling for long, in spite of periodic, though largely futile, resolutions to detoxify.

The present work in progress, The Island of the House of Light, lurches from pillar to post, but still seems to have some momentum. Through it, we have so far explored the various forms the Banshees of the Internet assure us the modern Apocalypse will take: AI, cyber-attack, climate catastrophe, radiation poisoning from reactor meltdowns, pandemics arising from long dormant viruses emerging from melting permafrost, nuclear war, forever chemicals, micro-plastic pollution, crazy dictators. We explored a meteorite strike in “Fall of Night”, so we’re leaving that one out.

The story seems, in part, to be a reaction to the daily doom-scroll, and the pathologies of our exposure to relentless bad news. Whatever our personal room 101, the algorithms are sure to find it, torture us with it, and we’ll most likely overlook the one existential threat we, in the west, should be truly frightened of – like perhaps the degradation of our democratic institutions, and a drift into authoritarianism.

The inn at the edge of light

I realise the title, “Island of the House of Light”, echoes another of mine, namely “The Inn at the Edge of Light”. This latter was most likely the result of cryptamnesia, being the corruption of a fictional invention of J B Priestly’s, called the” Inn at the End of the World”, which we encounter in his play Johnson over Jordan. This is probably based on a real inn, the George at Hubberholme, which I first discovered in upper Wharfedale, around a decade ago, a place whose sublime beauty has been calling me back annually ever since. The title also borrows from the Lancashire village of Bretherton, local to me, and also known as The Edge of Light, or, in the dialect, Th’Edge O’Leet.

Th’Edge O’Leet derives from olden times, when shrimpers would set out from their coastal haunts, by horse and cart to sell their wares at the market towns, inland, a route that would take them through Bretherton. If they had not reached Bretherton before first light, there was no point continuing on their journey, since they were already too late to secure the best stalls. For these traders, the edge of light was the transition from darkness to illumination, and a loss of their living. With the Inn at the Edge of Light it’s the other way round, a place best reached before nightfall, one where a choice of living is always on offer, if one is wise enough to answer the landlord the right way, when he asks if it’s the usual room you require. Edge O’Leet also calls to mind By Fall of Night, and thus we circle the subliminal condensation trails of an eccentric bibliography.

All of which is a bit strange – I mean thinking over these things, and is possibly the result of COVID coming on, and nothing but a glass or two of whiskey to keep it at bay. My good lady reports horribly vivid and realistic dreams of workplace anxiety, though she has not worked since 2016. It’s an under-reported side effect of COVID, the increased propensity for startling lucidity during dreams, and of bad dreams. It does not seem to have been properly explained, but then, since we are still arguing over what dreams are exactly, this comes as no surprise.

The subject of dreaming is a tangent I shall avoid leaping onto for now, but which will likely form one of the themes of exploration over the coming year, as it has done off and on since a dive into Jungian studies, around the turn of the millennium, and the story that came out of it: The Lavender and the Rose. But this was a novel that was more a question than an answer, more a submission to the irrational, and the start of a journey. When it comes to divining the meaning and purpose of life, science has no answers, for these are philosophical questions, and being a poor philosopher I must grind away at them very slowly, through the writing.

The Edge of light provides another metaphor, of course, as those of us of a certain age catch the first late afternoon hints of a setting sun. At present, I think I’m enjoying what the photographers call the golden hour but, in a blink, it’ll be ten years from now, and the sun will be kissing the horizon. Another heartbeat and it’ll be the last spark before the blue hour comes on. If Jung was right, everything a man does past the age of forty, should be in preparation for that moment, neither shying away from it in hedonistic oblivion, nor wailing in lament at a race too swiftly run.

Jung’s answer is to disregard the Edge of Light and live on, as if we had centuries, which, for some reason, brings to mind the memoir of a wartime pilot I read as a child. In it, he describes returning from what I suppose must have been daylight raids over Europe, heading home across the North Sea, into a setting sun. He discovered he was able to postpone the sunset by gaining altitude. Thus, we see the ground-bound fixity of the sunset as an illusion, one dispelled by adopting a higher perspective, that even as it sets in one place, it is always rising in another.

So, here we go, throttle wide open. Let’s get this bird in the air!

Welcome to 2024.

Thanks for listening.

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