Out and about – around the Lancashire Coast

Bank End, Cockerham

They have installed a new parking meter, and spy cameras at Glasson Basin. There are two things to note about that. (1) The price to park has gone up, and (2) I found the meter impossible to understand. But help was on hand from the younger generation, and we muddled through. The important thing is we’re here, the walk having been postponed from February.

It’s good to be in Glasson again, though I was saddened by that parking thing, and the hike in tariffs, as it’s not exactly the Lakes or the Dales. Yes, there is an understated charm about the place, but this new parkomat seems to rather overstate its virtues. It will of course be something of a cash-cow, as the days warm, and the weekend crowds return.

But for now, it’s a cold morning, and there’s a steady breeze off the water, with razor blades in it. There’s an in-and-out sun, but a mostly gloomy sky. The forecast is for dry until mid-afternoon. Then a band of rain and sleet is set to sweep up from the south, but we should be on our way home by then.

There’s a forlorn look to the few barges moored on the canal, as we walk by on this first leg of our journey. Indeed, they puncture any bubble of romance one might have had about living off grid, and on the water. They look rusty, damp and cold. Some vessels have also moved out of the vicinity of the basin and are now moored much further down the canal, as if shunned from the port’s environs. There is trouble afoot here. The sleepy look of Glasson belies recent tensions with the port authority, who appear to be asserting themselves over the local residents, and in ways that aren’t at all popular.

Glasson Basin

From the canal, we take the little lanes south, through the meadows, towards Thursland Hill. In doing so, we pass the Morecambe R/C aeroplane club who are putting their little machines through their paces. There is also the steady drone of a Pilatus as it takes off from the skydiving centre where, for as little as £150, you too can throw yourself from an aeroplane.

The vast meadows around Thursland Hill are dotted with itinerant swans today. They are the biggest of our birds, and so common a sight on our lakes and waterways, we take them for granted. I think they look better on the water than off it. Off it, there is also a lumbering menace about them. Beyond the meadows, beyond the swans, in the far distance, the shaggy Bowland fells are dusted with snow.

Beyond Thursland Hill, the scenery shifts from cultivated plain, to coastal marsh. I’ve said before how the Victorians took the most attractive bit of the Lancashire coast and built the screaming fun metropolis of Blackpool on it. At least that’s Blackpool’s front of house. For the rest, it is the most deprived town in the North. I’m sure there are other towns who can argue they are worse off, but it’s not exactly a competition we should relish, and speaks volumes instead to the times.

This bit of the coast is untamable, and therein lies both its charm and its salvation. However, even here, much of what we see is shaped by sheep, reared for the salt marsh lamb, and for which Bank End farm is famous. As in much of the Lake District, they crop the shaggy grasses and give a fresh mown appearance, which is pleasant, but unnatural. There are a couple of benches by the farm here for weary pilgrims to rest their bones. I choose one for lunch. On the other sits a man with a telescope and a notebook, spotting birds out on the marsh. We exchange greetings. He seems a quiet type, has with him a quiet, companionable dog. I don’t like to disturb them, so we share the view in easy silence.

It’s around noon, and the incoming tide is beginning to fill the vast network of dendritic channels which are patrolled by shrilly piping oystercatchers. There are eagle-eyed cormorants, too, statue-still, waiting for incoming fish. There is a lone egret, and further out, by their thousands, all huddled together, on a slowly vanishing sandbank, there are dunlin. That’s the extent of my knowledge of coastal birds, but I bet the other guy has spotted dozens more. If there is any healthy diversity in the natural world, it is at the liminal zones like these, where human reach is limited. Elsewhere is ruin.

The light is strange, today. I want to say it is gloomy, but there’s an occasional glow to it, like something sunny and revelatory is wanting to press through. The moments are fleeting, and we let the camera make of them what it can. As we walk, I’m worried about Jansen Pool, which is coming up on the latter part of our meander. It’s a tidal channel, through which our path passes, and is sometimes submerged. There is no viable alternative, other than a long back-track, or acrobatics involving a farm gate and slippery planks. I have checked the tides, and we’re looking at five meters today, around mid-afternoon. The problems only arise at the spring tides, and we are several days past the moon’s full. We should be okay then, but I am no Salty Sam, and have been caught out before. That’s for later, but adds a certain spice of anticipation as we make our way up the coastal trail to Cockersands.

The Chapter House, Cockersand Abbey

We try a couple of fresh perspectives here. One is of the Chapter House, the sole remains of the Abbey, and a grade 1 listed building. It’s a perspective I’ve copied by researching other photographers’ takes on it, though we seem to have captured today’s fleeting light and moody sky. Then, turning to face the sea, there is also a striking view of the Plover Scar lighthouse and an altogether different mood. It has a kissing gate at land’s end for foreground interest. The lighthouse looks rusty and ancient, even though it was only recently rebuilt after a ship collided with it. Beyond the light, we have the wide reach of Morecambe Bay, and a snow speckled Black Coombe.

The Plover Scar Light

I check the phone, on which I run the navigation app, to confirm the distance still to go. I have forgotten to turn the data off, so a notification has leaked through and informs me there will be no pundits on Match of the Day, tonight. I’m not a fan of football, and haven’t watched Match of the Day for donkey’s years. But this is about much more than football.

The lead presenter is a popular celebrity, with a huge Twitter-base. He has said something derogatory, but essentially true, about the government’s refugee policies and the BBC have suspended him for his candour. His colleagues have now also withdrawn their labours, quoting “solidarity”. This is not the sort of word one usually hears among the astronomically well paid, but welcome all the same.

It is a serious matter for the BBC who appears to have caved in, and very publicly, to political pressure. It damages their reputation as an impartial public service broadcaster, and is to be regretted. But it is a reputation already in question on account of their chairman being a significant donor to the Conservative party. I don’t see this playing out at all well. But I note also the media fuss is over the man, rather than the policy, which is widely, and internationally condemned.

I fear all of this means the next few years will be a hateful time, as more cultural issues are stoked for their incandescent effects on public opinion. Indeed, we’re going to hear a lot about who we should hate or fear, as a distraction from more pressing issues. Those damned bloggers for a start, perhaps, those bleeding heart amateur hacks, bleating on like they know what they’re talking about. But we should remember that, while the populists claim to be defending us against bogey-persons of their own invention, our futures are being dismantled brick by brick, freedom by freedom, doctor by doctor, nurse by nurse, and ambulance call by ambulance call,…

Tidal flooding at Jansen Pool

Anyway,… Jansen Pool is passable with a mere splash of the boots, unlike in the photo, taken on a previous occasion and which required acrobatics. Then we’re up the final pasture, where the thorn trees make dramatic shapes against a glowering sky. And, finally we return to Glasson, to the shimmering basin, and the simmering discontent of its locals, to its eclectic moorings, and its shiny new parkomat. Here, we call at the Lock-keeper’s rest for chips, and a brew. There’s always a handful of garrulous hairy bikers here, with their thundering machines. It’s a good run out on a bike, or in a little blue car with the top down. But we’re in the big grey one today, anticipating this band of weather, and wary of salty roads for fear they might dissolve the little blue car’s undersides. The big grey one ran well, was powerful and comfortable. It’ll be taking us some distance in the coming year.

As we’re served our chips, the skies darken, and the rain comes on. It’s gentle, just the lightest kiss, but with flecks of sleet in it. In a world of few certainties, it’s comforting to know you can at least still rely on the factual impartiality of the Met office.

Six and a half miles, dead flat.

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All dogged out – around the Roddlesworth reservoirs

If you’re a dog owner, I’m sure you’re very responsible, and your creature is so well-trained you can take it anywhere, without others even knowing it’s there, and you keep it on a tight leash when other, non-doggy people, are around. And I admit, they can be great fun, good company and even cuddlesome. But I’ve gone my length with them today, and hope not to see another for a very long time.

You catch up with me, actually, by the little cascade at Rocky Brook, deep in the woods at Roddlesworth, where I have just been interfered with by a filthy great Labrador. It has thundered through the brook, trailed drool and snot all over my nice new satchel, then stuck its snout in my soup, the scent of which I presume is what piqued its particularly lungeous interest. I had a split second to decide: either save my lunch, or the Nikon, and the Nikon won. Fortunately, I’d eaten most of the soup. Still,..

The owner stood across the brook, shouting uselessly. Dogs, however, like teenagers, are renowned for being selectively deaf. I’m afraid I may have uttered the F word, but the dog was unmoved by it. I got a weak apology from the human, which is more than I usually get, but it was too late. My Zen was worn thin, and I was grumpy, now.

The route around the reservoirs is popular with dogs, whose humans chauffeur them here en-mass to be emptied. I must have passed a hundred of them today, most of them off the lead and jolly, and whilst to bounced at by one friendly doggie might be cute, it’s a cuteness that soon wears off. Indeed, of everyone I saw, only one other guy was like me, sans mutt. And there were faeces, of course, both bagged and not, lurking in the bushes, or more boastfully dumped mid-trail, in spite of water board signs reminding us the reservoirs here are not just for fancy. They hold our drinking water. I try not to think of all this, when I run the tap at home.

But anyway, I needed five miles today, and a bit of up and down, and this round of the reservoirs, through the plantations of Roddlesworth and Tockholes, fit the bill perfectly. The legs are still a bit empty after even a mild dose of COVID, and the pull up to the café at Ryal Fold had me blowing. I’ve also been harbouring a phobia of drinking from a cup I’ve not washed myself, since that’s how I suspect I caught the bug, so I’d planned on a therapeutic brew at what they used to call Vaugn’s café, but more dogs, and their attendant people, were queued out the door, so I gave it a miss.

It’s a mid-week morning, and there are so many people about, and not all of them looking like they’re of an age to be retired. I may have mentioned this observation before. The government has noticed too, and is concerned so many of the middle-aged plus group have quit work, become what they’re euphemistically calling “the economically inactive”. In practical terms, this means there are not enough workers to be abused by bastard bosses, stressed out by bullshit emails, spied upon by activity monitors on work-from-home laptops, and all for toy-town wages.

On the one hand, then, I don’t blame them, and was glad to quit ahead of time myself, but on the other hand, a brew would have been nice. We have thousands of people risking their lives to come here, desperate to study, to work, and to provide service, but if they survive the journey, we lock them up in cheap hotels, in deprived parts of the north, where we invite head-bangers to threaten them with violence, then deport these poor precious souls on the slightest pretext, before turning our backs and speaking sweetly instead to our dogs. The world confuses me, and I try not to engage with it so much these days, for it’s a topsy-turvey place and makes my head spin. Boy, have I got it on me today, though. That soup snaffling dog has a lot to answer for.

But let’s forget all that, now. It’s such a beautiful morning, and with the first hints of warmth in the sun. Tonight’s full moon also promises positive change. We parked on Dole Lane at Abbey Village, then made the loop. I’d decided to walk it the other way round, which always turns the familiar into something completely different. The sunlight was scattering beautifully over the waters of the reservoirs. There were tits bobbing about, and noisy, in the trees – noisy tits also on the trail, but the least said about them the better. I spied a yellow wagtail, and attempted a photograph, but you need a very long lens to do birds justice, and a 140 mm really doesn’t cut it. Then I hear woodpeckers making busy, drilling holes in trees. Things are moving, the season is coming on.

It was mid-November when I last walked this round. Autumn had got under way, and the trees were glorious in copper and gold. Today they’re bare and statuesque, buds greening, many of them mossy and backlit in dramatic style by this low slanting sun. Only the beech saplings are holding onto their leaves from last year. Soon they will discard them and fresh foliage will unfurl, spring green, and a sight for sore eyes. But I’ll be giving it a miss here, unless the council declares dog-free days, but that will only set the libertarians off on GB Radio, and add to the interminable culture wars. So I’ll do my bit to keep the peace, and wend my ways somewhere else, then the dogs can defecate and snaffle soup at will without some grumpy old git like me getting uppity about it.

So, lunch done, or rather half done, we clean the drool from the satchel as best we can. The soup pot will need a damned good scouring, and boiling water, or maybe just throw it away and buy another, as I really don’t fancy it now. For the return leg, we follow Rocky Brook, back towards Abbey. The brook is running well today, is musical and sparkling in the sunlight. There are a few nice perspectives on it that I’ve spotted on previous walks, and home in on again today. I’m hunkered down on the rocks, just off the path, composing a particular shot of splashing water, when I’m interfered with by another dog, at other times cute and friendly, but right now in my face, and I find myself in too dark a place to be nice to it, or even to return the owner’s greeting and the usual: “Ah, he’s harmless, he won’t bother you.”

Already has, mate. Obviously.

Roddlesworth; great if you’re with a dog, but give it a miss if you’re not. Clearly, for my next walk, I need to be where dogs are not. And I suspect I need to meditate.

Five miles though! Getting there.

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Out and about – around the Yarrow Reservoir

I tested negative for COVID on day ten, so nipped out to fuel the little blue car. The drive wore me out, and my arms and legs didn’t feel like my own. I’ve been a bit cautious then, getting back into the walking saddle, so much so, today’s walk hardly counts, at barely two miles, but enough to see what’s what, and hopefully get things rolling again.

It’s one of those cold, grey, late winter days. The light is flat, the colours muted. We have clumps of snowdrops, plus the miniature daffodils are out, and the garden forsythia is showing yellow. When in doubt, I always let the car decide, and it always delivers me to the Parson’s Bullough road, by the Yarrow Reservoir, at Anglezarke. You’ve a good choice of routes from here, from the epic, to the bimbling, and I think bimbling is the more sensible choice, today. We’ll see if we can claim our legs back, and trust the rest will follow when it’s ready.

So, you catch up with me driving up Adlington’s Babylon lane. I was always going to buy a house up here, handy for Rivington and the moors, and I seem to drive it every week. I could save myself some miles. Babylon Lane is mostly old mill terraces, and can look a bit dour, but as you reach the top, and the junction by the Bay Horse, everything opens out, and the beauty of the West Pennines hits you all at once. You can travel straight on from here to Rivington, or cut left down Nickleton Brow, for Anglezarke. This is one of the most beautiful roads in the district, dropping to the bridge over the Yarrow, then up the other side, to the Yew Tree inn, and the reservoirs.

I’m not great, festering in doors for long periods. Even a few days of rain can make me twitchy, so the 10 days of self-imposed isolation was a bit of a trial, one that renders the outdoors strange, as the self-important media holds one captive, injecting its bad news, like a poison infinitely worse than COVID. In his recent piece, fellow blogger, Narayan, quoted Kurt Vonnegut as saying we are dancing animals. We are made to move, to get outdoors, to experience the world and other people. This struck a chord. Isolation, and gawping day after day at a computer screen, or doomscrolling our phones is not good for us. It is not dancing.

So, here we are, now, on the Parson’s Bullough road, looking to dance. There’s a huge flatbed truck in a little lay-by, and goodness knows how he got that up here, but it looks like they’re repairing the Allance Bridge, after a boy racer knocked the parapet off. My sense of smell has yet to make a return, so I can’t smell the leaf mould, or the moorland air, but as I crack open the door, something in the air is sufficiently welcoming, and revivifying. We step out, eager to embrace it.

In one of my early COVID reveries, I was wondering about getting a body-cam – though not because I fear assault when I’m out and about. I enjoy fiddling with clips from the little blue car’s dash cam, and wondered if a mash-up of a walk would be a fun thing to do. Of course, there are plenty of vloggers out there with the full kit and caboodle, including the buzzy drone for tracking shots that would make my efforts look childish, but still, I may have a go.

So, anyway, we’re moving. One foot in front of the other. The first test is the short, sharp hike up Hodge Brow, to where the path leaves the road, by Morrises. I was thinking it would flatten me, but we seem to have fuel in the tank. Things are looking good. The colours are so soft today, we’ll need to have a think about how to pull anything out of them with the camera, but without over-blowing it. What tends to happen is we lose detail, especially the distant woodlands blurring out, and everything looking muddy. Not a great day for the camera at all really, but we’ll try setting the upper limit on the ISO to 800, then we can get faster shutter speeds, and hopefully dissolve any noise in post-processing.

This eastern flank of the reservoir is the most attractive, the route meandering through open meadows, and quite elevated with views all around, to the moors, to the Pike at Rivington, and then out to the estuary of the Ribble. The land feels real, and comforting in its familiarity. Does that sound too obvious? But stuck at home, vulnerable to the worst of bad-news media, it’s easy to lose our way, imagining things to be important which are not. Or is it more a case of being encouraged to believe certain things are important, when they are not, in order to distract from other issues, which are.

I read this week the novels of Roald Dhal are to be censored, removing language that has, shall we say, fallen out of polite usage. The same fate is to befall Flemming’s Bond novels. The media seems made to inculcate strong opinions on such matters, and perhaps it’s because I’ve been ill, but I find it difficult to care. Philip Pullman suggests we should simply let such works go out of print if they are no longer suited to contemporary sensibilities, and I have some sympathy with that view. I’m no fan of Dhal or Flemming, but many still are. I am a fan of LeCarre, and some of his early works contain a language that was certainly of its time, so how soon before he is added to the mix. Many household names are the same. I suppose the issue is that these works still sell, and publishers are loath to let a good earner go out of print. But what do I think, urges the breathless media, you have to have an opinion. No, I don’t. Not today.

I think it was Krishnamurti who said something to the effect that the craziness only starts when men start to think, and then we argue over who’s right, even to the extent of killing one another over trifles. The natural world is not beset by such madness, which is perhaps why so many of us seek it out to regain our footing in the pell-mell of the world of men.

We come down to the southernmost point of the walk through Dean Wood, now, and the avenue of the chestnuts. When I last came this way, it was under snow. It beguiles me every time, inviting a shot, but I always struggle to do it justice. Here we pick up the track that comes up from Rivington, and we follow it around the western shore of the reservoir, first in the shadow of the Turner Embankment, named after the farm that was demolished to make way for it.

There’s a lone tree here that’s always photogenic, in any season. Again, I’ve yet to do it justice, but it’s always worth looking out for. Then the reservoir comes in to view again. There used to be a face in the wall, here, reputed to be a carving of the head of an unpopular foreman overseeing the works – this would be in the latter Victorian era. We used to have fun as kids, seeking him out on our family walks. He survived into the nineteen eighties, before disappearing, I presume stolen. I’ve often thought it telling how he survived in plain view for so long, and no one thought to steal him before.

Another landmark along this way, harder to steal, is the building we used to call the Diddy Man’s house – Ken Dodd was a mainstay of children’s TV when I was growing up. I presume the building houses a valve for the waterworks. We would knock to see if the Diddy Man was in, then press our ears against the door and hear the spilling of water. My father would tell us the Diddy Man was having a bath, so could not come to the door. He is having a bath again, today.

From the northwestern embankment we get a view down to the Anglezarke reservoir, and beyond, over the Lancashire Plain, to where the little blue car and I will shortly be returning. There’s a steep ravine here and, though I’ve walked past it hundreds of times, something about the trees overhanging it catches my eye today – the colours, the shape of them – and is certainly worth the last shot of the day. I remind myself this is all man made, and must have been a dramatic change to the landscape up here, armies of men with picks and barrows, then flooding the valleys, flooding out farmsteads and pastures. It’s been a long time coming, but there’s been a healing, and this is a landscape now much loved by many.

So now we’re back, the little blue car waiting in the layby with a flask of tea, and some lunch. The legs feel like my own again, and the mind seems capable of its usual accompanying ruminations. You know, after joining the ranks of COVID veterans, I think we’ll do. We’ll make it four miles next time. Thanks for listening.

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Out and about – around the Abbey reservoir

It beggars belief, but yesterday’s domestic news was dominated by our recently ousted PM’s unsubtly trailed and somewhat premature angling for a comeback. In her forty-day tenure – the shortest serving PM in history – she crashed the markets, wiped billions off investments, stunted the growth of defined benefit pensions for millions of workers, and ruined the UK’s reputation for sound financial governance. But, she writes, it was not her fault. She was badly advised. And worse, there are those within the now bitter dregs of her party who think she’s right. My heart sinks, says the leader of the opposition. Mine too, mate.

Then, political journalist, Andrew Marr, now released from the constraints of corporate news media, has been more frank and informative in his analysis of world events of late. Rumours of an early end to the war in Ukraine are premature, he says – though I must admit I had not heard any such rumours – and we should be prepared for it to go on for another five or ten years. This will cast a dark shadow over European – indeed world – affairs throughout the 20’s. But the UK is particularly exposed, it being now the worst performing of the western nations, including Russia, with stagnant growth and levels of entrenched inequality that are quite staggering. You are better off being poor virtually anywhere else in the world, than in the UK. We must expect energy and food prices to remain high, for a long time.

All of this paints a bleak picture, one that is in contrast to the positive vibes of the morning, with clear skies and the frost still lying across the meadows. We leave the car on Dole Lane at Abbey Village, and walk down to the Hare and Hounds, then strike out along the right of way whose signage does its best to say it is not a right of way, but access only to a private residence. But a right of way it is, and has been forever, so off we go.

Just a short walk today, more of a dog waking circuit for Abbey residents, and incomers like me, around the lower reservoirs, and the Roddlesworth plantations. We have no dog, but there is no shortage of yappy canine accompaniment, and our trousers are soon muddied by an over-friendly, jumpy creature, who gets a telling off by a scold-faced woman. I am ready to wave away her apology, but do not get one. Most people we meet are open and friendly, but we tend only to mark the ones who are not.

We’re planning a bigger walk in the Forest of Bowland for later in the week, when the weather is looking iffy, but today, being such a good day, it was a pity to waste it indoors, so here we are, but not wanting to wear our legs out for the upcoming epic. We have time to linger over familiar ways, to take photographs, and to ponder world affairs. As we move from winter’s dark into the first hints of post Imbolc light, and the snowdrops begin to show, there is the feeling of a weight lifted, of an optimism returning. The media, however, have other ideas and would sooner scotch all hope before it has the chance to bud.

I have the long lens today, not the obvious choice for woodland photography, but I’m looking for details in isolation with blurry backgrounds. The obvious targets are the lone juvenile copper birches, holding onto their leaves, and rising into shafts of sunlight against a backdrop of fuzzed out darker woodland. I’ve a feeling it’s a cliché, but I’m not selling photographs, so it doesn’t matter. There’s something in them that’s worth a moment of contemplation, anyway. The branches have poise, like a dancer, expressive of,… well,… something.

The big international news of course is this devastating earthquake in Turkey and Syria. Over 5000 souls are known to be lost, so far. It’s an unimaginable and sudden tragedy that puts our European troubles into perspective. It’s also worth remembering, however, that a study by the University of Glasgow concludes we lost 335,000 souls, across the home nations, between 2012 and 2019, due to poverty alone, as caused by political austerity a fact the media seems curiously reticent about. But to dwell on these things, says our redoubtable chancellor, is to talk Britain down.

On the middle reservoir, the fly-fishermen have pulled their boats in for the winter, so the cormorants are perched instead on the mooring buoys. Patient birds, they share the character of vultures in their Victorian funeral feathers. We are also befriended by a robin which hops onto a post within arm’s reach, and eyes us cheekily. He bobs about there for ages, so enchanting we forget about the camera, and as soon as we do remember it and try to get focus, he’s gone.

Then we meet a bunch of guys we used to work with, the entire department actually, all retired, but still keeping in touch and meeting up for regular walks. It was a tonic to see them looking so hale and hearty. The chancellor scowls and tells us we are part of the problem, we, the early retired, and economically inactive, and should get back to work, along with the sick and disabled, fill in all those vacancies left by our European friends who went home post BREXIT. But the taxman still collects his dues from us, which is more than can be said for certain members of the cabinet. He will have a tough job coaxing us back into the office, should we even be wanted, which I am sure by now we are not.

We have in common our freedom from the constraints of those things we cannot alter, like the clocking machine for a start, and the daily deluge of bullshit emails. We have the freedom to focus on those things that are within our remit: to stay at home and write, do a bit of DIY, tidy the garden, come out for a walk, explore an unfamiliar part of the country, choose which lens to bring with the camera. These are small things for sure, but important all the same, if not as things in themselves, then as vehicles for exploring the deeper self. But even granted such freedom, we risk ignoring it, to go fretting instead over those things we cannot change, like what further madness the chancellor and his swivel eyed colleagues might be planning next. How about scrapping all environmental, food, employment and animal welfare standards? And making it illegal to go on strike.

I have begun a new story, about a man living alone on a remote Scottish island. He finds a humanoid robot of the type they are now developing, and hyping to a ridiculous extent, washed up on the beach. I take all the frankly improbable tech utopian projections, and bestow them in spades upon my fictional bot. It wakes up and proves itself both intelligent and an astonishingly capable companion, as well as gorgeously female in appearance. In what ways does it alter the man’s outlook on his own life?

Artificial Intelligence is a hot topic, but even as a romantic with an increasingly non-dualist perspective, I hesitate to make fun of it. It is a thing to be reckoned with and, if the impact of the Internet is anything to go by, it will render the near future unrecognisable, and in ways that are not predictable and not entirely benign either. Again, this is something we have no control over, but at least as a writer I can explore it, whilst being careful not to be too shrill in its condemnation, or as its advocate. We’re up to three chapters and the ideas are still coming, but we’ll say no more in case I jinx it.

Anyway, just two and a half miles today in frosty sunshine, then a pleasant drive back over the moors. At home, we clean and waterproof the boots for Bowland. I read on a blog recently of a method of spiritual and philosophical reflection, where we cast our minds back over the week, and ask what lessons we learned, something our former PM would do well to dwell upon. I’m not sure if I’ve heard this before – I think I might have – but it’s not something I do by habit, and it’s early in the week yet, so I hesitate to jump to conclusions.

We’ll see come Friday.

Thanks for listening

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Out and about – High noon on Noon Hill, with John Wick

A light fall of snow overnight clears to a frosty dawn. The forecast is too good to be skulking about indoors, so we muster our gear, then set out for Rivington, and the Hall Avenue.

Mid-week, mid-morning, and it’s busy with cars, kids and dogs. These are school age kids, and they are with working age parents. Again, I wonder to what they owe their premature attainment of escape velocity. There’s a sprinkling of snow here, and the ground feels mushy where the sun touches it, but it’ll most likely be frozen, higher up, so we pack the spikes – just in case – and off we go. Check: camera on aperture auto, shooting RAW, and set to bracket, polariser on the 18-140mm lens.

I’m a bit pie-eyed this morning, and feeling gormless. I used to be a night bird, but no longer seem able to burn the midnight oil without consequences. I’d stayed up watching a movie that had been recommended, called John Wick. Personally, I found it mindlessly violent, almost like a video game. There was one brutal set piece after the other, and then the embarrassing festishisation of ever more elaborately phallic firearms. And there was a veneer of glamour whose thrust had me wincing more than the oft-wielded knife blades. Okay, so it wasn’t my preferred genre.

I didn’t make it to the end, but fell asleep, frankly, bored. That said, John Wick’s brooding, funereal presence is still following me around this morning. I hope he’s wearing a decent pair of boots, or he’ll be grumbling later.

Unlike John’s violent and nihilistic universe, the world of Rivington is peaceful, and beautiful. We take a meandering approach to the terraced gardens – no particular route in mind, as seems usual with me these days, when on home territory. The snow cover thickens as we climb, and the low sun paints buttery highlights. There’s just enough whispy cloud to add interest to the sky without it tipping the atmosphere into something gloomy. John would prefer it gloomy, he says, while checking for the firearms secreted about his person. But this is England, and we don’t allow that sort of thing here. He’s puzzled by this. I mean, what if someone insults you?

On the great lawn, there are two summerhouses, now wonderfully restored and architecturally fascinating. I’ve just worked out one faces the morning sun, the other the evening. Mi’lord Leverhulme would have taken breakfast on fine summer mornings at one, and sipped his sundowners at the other. And me, sitting down on the steps of his morning summerhouse, basking in this buttery light, would have been seen off with dogs, and John, no doubt in Mi’lord’s employ. A century later, I have my revenge, and sit with impunity, for Time is the great leveller.

I never tire of the gardens. They’re certainly a royal way to approach the Pike, and the moors beyond. A vague plan is beginning to form. We’ll do the Pike, then chance the moor, across to Noon Hill.

The café that has recently popped up in the ruins of the old public lavatories, below the Pike, is open, and John is gasping for a coffee. It has recently installed a diesel generator, and we are treated to its noxious exhaust as we approach from downwind. I am not tempted, but John grabs a quick one, then crushes, and discards his cup in the bushes. I fish it out and put it in my bag, decide against giving him a lecture on it. He seems at times on the verge of becoming a reformed character, but a moment’s thoughtlessness, and he reverts to type.

There’s quite the procession going up the Pike, they’re also struggling, avoiding the steps, which are thick with ice. So we put the spikes on and make a traverse, spiralling round to get at the top from behind. It’s cold and blowy, people taking selfies. They’re looking at John like they know him from somewhere. Again, there are many here I would have thought of an age to be either in college or working. I wonder if they are on strike today.

The various strike actions are deepening across the country now, and the usual yapping dog presses seem to be failing in their attempts to demonise the Union officials. The government is also looking crass and incompetent, in its refusal to negotiate. The political Zeitgeist is swinging to the centre and would swing further, but the left no longer has meaningful representation. The powerful have not grasped these are not the nineteen seventies. The discontent is different, born of an inequality our parents never knew, one that has been a decade in the manufacture, at the hands of those who, by contrast, have profited handsomely by it. John confides in me, he’s been approached by several kingpins with a view to taking out ringleaders of discontent. He’s told them he’s retired and doesn’t do that sort of thing any more.

Anyway, in the summer months the route across the moor from the Pike to Noon Hill can be difficult to trace, and intermittently boggy. But today it’s plainly picked out by a dusting of snow, a thin white line squiggled over an undulating expanse of pale straw, and the ground is hard. The trick is knowing where the snow is covering bog, and how thick the underlying ice is. Will it take your weight, or will you burst through over your boots? As we get going, we look back and take a few shots of the pike in retrospect. There’s a lone man making his way up, and with a tight crop, the scene is dramatic.

Noon Hill is an unimpressive summit from this angle, just a small spur off the Winter Hill ridge. It’s more interesting when viewed from the west, where it forms a meridian with Great Hill, and I’ve often wondered if there’s any significance in the fact that, whatever the time of year, when viewed from Anglezarke, the sun will always be directly above Noon Hill, at noon. What do you think, John? John shrugs, couldn’t care less, checks instead for the knife in his sock. I’d told him to lose that, because it’s a one way ticket to chokey, if he’s caught. He looks at me like I’ve lost my mind. What kind of dumb-ass country is this where a man can’t carry a knife or a gun? Clearly, we’ve a way to go before we can restore his faith in humanity.

Noon Hill is the site of a Bronze Age saucer burial. It was first excavated in 1958 by John Winstanley who was then curator of the Hall in th’Wood Museum. It was an eventful dig, and his diary makes for interesting reading. Further information can be had at the excellent Lancashire Past website, here. There are also some fascinating period photographs of the dig here.

The ground becomes more treacherous the nearer we get to the top, and the light turns bleak as thicker clouds begin to gather from the south. The view looking back to the Pike takes on the appearance of a revelation now, as the sun fans down though whatever heavenly apertures it can find. But it is the view northwards that is the most stunning, across Anglezarke moor. Then there’s the land falling away to the plain, and finally the glittering line of the sea, to the west. And to the east, we have the stacked ranks of increasingly snowy hills, marching out towards Rossendale.

But there’s little time to settle and enjoy it, greeted as we are by a face numbing wind, so it’s a quick shot of the snowy cairn with Winter Hill in the background, then turn tail and make our way down. The time for Noon Hill is a clear summer’s day, with a pair of binoculars.

We take the short route down to the old turnpike, then the unofficial path that drops us steeply to the bend on Sheephouse lane, and finally, a very boggy return to Rivington. It’s a walk that always feels longer than it is – just over four miles, and seven hundred and fifty feet of ascent, but a pleasantly varied route, and far enough given what looks like a bit of weather moving in.

Time for a brew, now. John’s smiling a bit. You know what? I think we’ve mellowed him out. He says he’s sorry about that coffee cup, earlier on. I just hope no one picks a fight with him in the tearoom, or we’re all in trouble.

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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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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.

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A Lone Tree Falls – The Secret Above all Secrets

Spies are interested in secrets, and will go to extraordinary lengths to obtain them. But for all their efforts, do spies keep us safe? They protect the interests of their home countries, or at least a certain demographic within them, but, taken worldwide, is the number of innocents lost to violence, any less than if the spies, as a profession, had not bothered to glean their secrets, or is it perhaps even the worse for it?

It’s a question suggested by a line from a le Carré spy novel, and it got me thinking. Around the same time, a beech tree came down in winter storms. I’d known it since childhood and thought it would stand forever. Its loss was a shock, and seemed an ill omen, considering all that was going on in the world, and in particular my own country – politically, socially, economically. And then there’s the old Zen thing – which isn’t actually a Zen thing – about how the tree that falls alone makes no sound.

Corruption in high places, staggering levels of inequality, unaffordable rents and energy, children eating erasers at school to stave off hunger pains. Britain, in 2022. Is that enough of a dystopia, or shall we project it forward a little? 2025, say? Or 2030? It should be easy enough to plot where we’ll be, given current trends, but do we really want to go there?

This is the background music as I sit down to write, in early 2022, and what takes shape over the course of the year is a story called A Lone Tree Falls. It proposes the quest for a secret, and the searcher is a former spy turned mystic. But this is no ordinary secret. This is the Secret above all secrets.

The Secret above all secrets tells us the world isn’t what we think it is, that our obsession with the materiality of it is a misunderstanding of the way things are. It is an illusion, and all we do by our obsession with it is perpetuate it. This is not to say we have any choice. It is our fate that our mortal lives at least are spent abiding in this state, but we do have a choice in how we react to it. We can either persist in ignorance of the deeper picture, in which case we gain nothing, and we finish our lives pretty much where we started. Or we can wake up.

Waking up begins with the lone tree that falls, and the realisation it made no sound, and it goes on to the conclusion that there is no difference between you and whatever you are looking at, that all there is to anything is mental phenomena, though the strict rules, spun out of an evolving Universe, leave us no option but to deal with the world as it appears – as solidly real and (mostly) impermeable to the will. But if that revelation is not to implode into the absurdity of philosophical solipsism, one must also wake up to the notion that the essence of one’s self, like everything else, is dreamed into being by the Universe, and not the other way round.

This is the mystical path. It’s a well trodden one, but what’s the point of it? My guess – since I’m only writing about it, rather than making a career of it – is, once you arrive at that destination, it affects your dealings with other people, who, like you, are dreamed into being. So, we are all the same in this respect, both the dreamers and the dreamed. The feeling you have of your own awareness of self, is the same as everyone else’s. All that’s different is our back-story. The other man’s pain, whether you like that guy or not, is your own pain. Hurt him, and you hurt yourself.

But it’s one thing to be told a secret, quite another to believe it. But such is the quest of our protagonist, this former spy of sorts who is also mostly the Fool from the Tarot, or sometimes the Magician, when he needs to be.

I didn’t want to write this story. I wanted to write a simple boy meets girl romance, but the story had other ideas and wanted out. We’re pretty much there with it now, and I’ll have it up on Smashwords in the coming weeks. As for the conclusion, does my protagonist believe in the Secret? Do I? Can we even get there by a pathway of words and thoughts? Or is that just part of illusion as well? I don’t know. We’ll see.

Next time though, next time, it will be a simple boy meets girl romance.

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The sutra of the king’s return

The abbot gathered the order in the meditation hall, brothers Angus and Benjamin among them, and bade them sit. Then he spoke of hard times ahead. This was nothing new, thought Angus. There had been nothing but hard times for decades, that indeed the hard times were the main reason he had turned to the monastery, for peace of mind, in the first place. But even now, after many years, he was finding peace of mind still hard to come by.

Then the abbot spoke of the recently deposed king. He reminded the monks of how the king’s misconduct, over many years, had been the cause of his eventual removal by exasperated ministers, and how the king, following his disgrace, had been cast into exile. In his place, there had been appointed a princess, a choice many had thought ill-advised, on account of her having kept company with forces believed to be allied with the barons.

Now, the barons had long ago accomplished the impoverishment and defenestration of the serfs, Angus among them, and had begun to turn their attention towards the merchants. But the barons had acted in ignorance of the full power of the merchants, who had caused a revolt, which had threatened to bankrupt the entire kingdom. In renewed desperation, and with great effort, the ministers had persuaded the princess to surrender the crown, so the merchants might be placated.

Although cloistered, Angus was only too well aware of the turbulence beyond the monastery walls. Indeed, he was ever hungry for rumours, which he picked up from the lay-brothers, who had greater contact with the outside world. What puzzled Angus now, though, was what any of this had to do with them, since the monasteries had no power, and no influence over events.

The abbot went on: so great had the chaos been in the halls of the palace, the ministers had looked about in vain for someone else among the royal line who might now take up the crown. But then some ministers had begun to look back fondly upon the days of misrule by the king, for even though his behaviour had been disgraceful, and dragged the name of the kingdom into disrepute, reducing it even to a laughing-stock among its neighbours, he had been careful never to upset the merchants. And sensing now the ambivalence of the ministers, the king, had begun petitioning for the restoration of his crown, which he saw as his by right.

Thus, the kingdom was suddenly agog with rumour that the old rogue might actually return. Now, this was news to Angus, and he sat forward, listening ever more intently. Could it be true? What would the abbot have to say about it? Opinion in the land was polarised between those aghast, and those who were delighted, for it was said the king possessed a powerful charm, gifted to him by the Goddess of Misrule, and to which only the most settled, and clear of mind were immune.

Of course, some ministers looked less forgivingly upon those days of misrule, and were inclined to dismiss the king’s ambitions as beyond the pale. But already the criers, and jesters, who had themselves called for the removal of the king only months before, and had sung in praise of the princess’s accession, were even now preparing the way for the king’s return with sweet songs, sung in the town squares, throughout the kingdom. And even among the defenestrated serfs, there were murmurs of assent.

Being themselves of the most settled and clear of mind, the monks listened to all of this news, impassively, for theirs was not the world of the town squares, or the serfs, or the merchants, or the barons, or the ministers. As for the criers, and the jesters, their duplicitous songs were transparent to anyone who was not tone-deaf. As for what the monks’ response should be to all of this, the abbot smiled mysteriously, and suggested they would do well to meditate upon it.

But this failed to quell the anxiety in Angus’ breast, and he turned briefly to Benjamin, a more experienced monk, for reassurance, only to see him tip back his head and let out a silent laugh, before nodding in approval at the abbot’s wisdom. With that, the monks were dismissed, and it was later, in the courtyard, Benjamin said to Angus: “Well, brother, you’ve got to hand it to the Abbot. He’s one crafty old devil, and a genius of a teacher.”

“But I didn’t get it,” said Angus. “What would the abbot have us do about the return of the king? Take to Twitter, or something?”

Benjamin shook his head, picked up a stone, and handed it to Angus, then instructed him to go down to the pond by the farm, at sunset, to toss the stone into the water, that by doing so he would have his answer.

So Angus did as Benjamin suggested. He went down to the pond at sunset. It was a beautiful evening, the pond was a perfect mirror for the sky, and a balm for the soul. Angus tossed the stone in and watched as the ripples broke the surface. Then the ripples were reflected, intersecting each other, until the entire pond was made up of separate shards of light all pointing in different directions, and the clarity of the reflection of the sky was lost.

He slept better that night than he had for a long time, and promised himself in future he would distance himself from the lay-bothers, whose endless gossiping kept him awake at night, wrestling with matters he had no power to influence, yet which prevented him from attaining the clarity of his own mind, and thereby the authentic nature of his being.

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