a gift carried back from Xian. No gift better than crossing her mind. The mercury rising, the metal fob hot in my palm after a day on the paint. Bees and blossom out in the old orchard, first day of summer. Beer for the working man. A silent, private glimpse of the moon in the kitchen, Nick Drake whispering to me. I have to be up at seven for the carpet man. We don’t choose the path, the path chooses us. But be humble, every breath is a wonder.
the walls, it’s whether you can pass between that matters. I’ve been too busy living to post, still caught up in the house, family roamings and a queue of work. I’m fitting locks and laying lino in the gaps. And the weeks gush by, the tides always on the turn.
rush of air again, a blast from the open oceans. It stops me in the street, calls me away from my messages, the run to the paint shop, the clutched bag for life with tonight’s vittles, my surface trampings and distractions in torn, faded jeans and scuffed boots. My weeks have been a fixed mechanism of late, I move from house to shop to desk. There’ve been no mountains, only the little cathedral peak I have tried to construct in the college orchards, a triangle of black steel. Out to the cutting sheds for a run of granite for the window cill. A limestone square for the hearth, if all the money’s not gone. And in the gaps there is snow and blossom, snow in crazy perfect polka through the open car door, a crystal dust on the old leather. And the thrumming wind. All I can do is stand and watch, hope it doesn’t pick me up and dash me down.
I know but I don’t have the information I want. I wish I knew more than I read in newspapers and on the web, some portal to the national mood to tap into. Is there some glorious fool out there that really knows it all, some atom-weave savant? All I know is I’m not much good at invisible brushstrokes with the mist coat, the harder I try the worse it looks. I’d like to be better at it. But I’m happy trying to improve. I can go with my allotted shape, this spin of the reincarnation wheel. I’m no billionaire but they’re just trying to get the brushstrokes right too, in their allotted skin, it’s all Kerouac and satori when the chips are down. The universe sends you messages to urge review and re-evaluation, a second of silence that breaks through the blood-beating hum.
under the old boards at the orchard house, another relic of former owners, maybe as old as me. The plumber cut it off when I asked him to move a pipe, dropped it into the pit between the joists. There to join the building site cache of 70s arcana, crumpled cans of Double Diamond and yellow front pages from the Daily Mirror behind my grandfather’s old staircase boarding. The era of Fray Bentos pies and mud-brown Morris Itals, Saturday morning comics, mechanical toys, the ski Gondola with the tangled wires my father brought back from a business trip to Switzerland. Bright-painted wooden tugs from Holland. A Hungarian chess clock. An ACTIONman land rover in green after a wet week camping at a Cambria youth centre, the box resting on the asphalt of the railway platform where he stood waiting for me, still with the five gold stars to collect printed on the side. All the things I cast away on that long tramp from power cuts and strikes and the scuffed knees of the first primary. And this shiny bit of brass I saved.
for a weathered and weary scribe, yet ready to step out. If we get a dog at the new place I’ll range out to Otmoor and Wytham Woods and the sad valley of Shotover, down to Mesopotamia and the rainbow bridge. I’ll chart new courses and pathways, hunting for my friend Riverman returned.
scrubbed hard yet betray their past, a morning with the trade bare plaster paint daubing the chateau. There’s no money left to pay for decorators, though I might crack and review the budget, slash a slate path or a radiator to escape the brushes. I don’t mind the work so much but time is rushing and I’m behind, always behind, with book work. And you can’t hurry the paint. I remember Clapham pubs with Mark, the early evening light, his hands speckled and streaked from a day at the canvas. Years of those days, patiently mixing and joining his colours. That’s a quarter century ago and I feel no different, just jaded, pudgier, frayed at the edges. The things we talked of are still current to me, still what I care about. But there’s no whooping and roaring in the boozer all night. There’s the knowing I must struggle to be conscientious, knowing I must raise the funds to see another mountain. There’s the house to finish and the year to bridle, cling tight as it breaks to a gallop.
out there on the British high street, just me and the chain shops, gulls dabbing at the after-pub litter and the memorial, always a memorial. I’ll find a coffee and steal away one hundred miles to home.
and bags of gravel, rain constant and heavy. No glamour but it brings an honest appetite. I hope whosoever cut my slate was at peace cutting it, gentle toiler like myself, laying it in the old orchards.
on my birthday, staggered through to the wolf moon tonight and musing on the wondrous gift of another half-c of weeks to explore. I’ll bake some Madeleines and plot my antics. Not much down yet, a house to move into, rope ties for the hammock or first plant the trees for it, Cadiz waiting for me out there in the mist, another cape to bag at Trafalgar. I’d like to see another mountain. The St Kilda cliffs would be special. I’m out there now with Hammond Innes with the waves getting too high for the LCAs. I’ve always wanted to see Harris, I could jump off from there? I’m still yearning.
