Heaven and Home

Curlews called in the creeks, and out from great plains of the bay came a gabbling of shelducks. Everything suggested spring; even the sound of your squealing as you rode your bike between the dykes to Almorness. You were going too fast to see the frogs which coddled the ditches with spawn. I had to Continue reading

The foodbank is underused in Dumfries, and there are so many shops involved into the scheme that a surplus has formed. The supermarkets reckon it’s good PR to feed the poor, so they teem their almost-out-of-date supplies into the depot and never wonder if it’s being used or finding a home amongst the needy. Perhaps Continue reading

You should see the carved oak panelling in the pub at Winkleigh. Connoisseurs would call it crude or rustic in execution, but only because it’s vaguely asymmetrical. Besides, there’s pleasure to be found in the visible handiwork; the scrape of each irregular chisel. You can see what the carver was trying to do, and you Continue reading

Tom Bullough’s Sarn Helen follows the author’s journey upon the ancient roman road which ran from south to north across Wales, from Neath to Llandudno. Gripped by an ever-heightening sense of of Cymruphilia, I would have found it hard to walk past this book, particularly since it’s got a picture of a curlew on the front cover. Continue reading

We had lunch in Broadford. Snow smacked wetly on the windows, and people came inside to get away from it. Out beyond the bar and the shining coffee machines, I watched Beinn na Caillich vanish into the blizzard. Nobody looked up or mentioned the mountain, even when it came out steaming in the sunshine afterwards. It’s said Continue reading

I spent two hours at Rûg chapel in September. It was all the time I had to give, but the ripples have expanded outwards since them. It’s begun to feel like a vast period of my life, as if it were five years at school or the heights of an early marriage. Time warps, and Continue reading

There were curlews at Geltsdale on Good Friday. They stood in confiding pairs at the roadside, and hardly five minutes passed in the course of an hour without birds calling overhead. As the sun set, two birds were mating in the rushy stubble of a field which has been cut to enhance their habitats. The Continue reading

The match flared into a luxury of curled bark, and crackling began soon afterwards. I’m used to lighting fires which call for long and gentle coaxing, but this stove was hungry to begin and soon there were flames which pulled at the logs of the stove. I started to worry the sauna would begin without Continue reading

I lay for a time on my back in the fields below the house. Grass grew around me, and birds sang down upon my closed eyes. Half an hour passed, and I knew it would be hard to reenter the world from a period of total peace. My eyelids aren’t thick enough to conceal a Continue reading

I cut a blackthorn hedge at Hogmanay. I did it by hand with a flexible saw, and I saved most of the wood for kindling. As I threw sticks into a wheelbarrow, they landed upon other sticks, and the chattering pile played a cheery little tune in the frost. Even by lunchtime, the cuts were Continue reading