Richard's traveller's tales

Richard stayed with us before the New Year - I met him at Wareham railway station - gusts of wind rocked the cars in the parking bays - each People Carrier contained an anxious dad, rustling the pages of his Daily Mail - there was heavy rain, sluicing the taxis waiting for fares - I could not see Wadey from Jurassic Taxis - the bright windows of The Monsoon promised curries and pints of Ringwood Fortyniner - 

Later, after stewed apples and wonderful thimblefuls of Dows finest Reserve Port, sitting by the log fire in the snug, Richard told us some of his travellers' tales -

Kate, Richard said, was still in India, working as a volunteer on an organic farm, somewhere in the foothills of the  Himalayas - 

There's a picture of her and Jessie - behind them are young men with big beards, like Z Z Top, or miners in a Gold Rush town - they're toting their spades like Kalahsnikovs - 

Richard spoke of his bold daughter and her friend, making their way across a vivid crazy sub continent, from the backwaters of Kerala, to the cool air of Shimla - Kate learned her traveller's craft with Richard, in Mindano - 

When Richard glanced downwards at the evocative map of Northern India, I felt a surge of nervy excitement and happiness -

I opened my passport so that I could feel the electricity of airports buzzing in my veins -  

Wareham characters ...

Over the last three years, ever since my retirement, I've had the opportunity to study many Wareham characters - 

There's the road sweeper, who always wears a leather cowboy hat - he's tall and thin, with an austere expression - I see him, on Wareham Quay, wreathed in seagulls - 

Outside Farwells, the newsagents, I'll see a man with the wounded face of a castaway - he wears a venerable Barbour and has mad blue eyes - his rug is like matted felt - he roams the town, a sort of Holy Fool, unsettling shoppers with his fierce stare - 

I'll bump into Jocelyn, emerging from The Rex - she has a plummy voice and startling hair, dyed jet black - she was an actress in the 1940's - she once played the part of Sally Bowles - now in her eighties, her second home is this small quirky cinema - she'll be sipping her bumper of red when she hands over your ticket - ah, Christopher Bradley she'll drawl - 

On my way to Sainsburys , I'll have to pass the Bosnian Big Issue Lady - she has a large brown face, an air of patient suffering - she'll be smiling her hopeful yet guarded smile - how can I resist her? 

Ah, I have many little ones - my youngest one is ill, in hospital - God bless you - Happy  Merry Christmas - God bless you - 

She's wearing a black jacket and denim skirt - she could be standing on the Kreshchatik - 

I see her from inside the warm red Peugeot when it's raining - the radio's on, icy rain drops run down the windows - she sees us, waving, greeting us - 

God bless you - God bless you - 

An abstemious Christmas ...

There was a time when I loved drink - I'd gaze happily at the labels of wine bottles in rough off licenses, frequented by shaven headed bravos, murmuring the magic names to myself as though they were incantations - Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot noir, Pinotage, Rioja -

My dad would offer me a glass - the sun would be over the yard arm - he told me stories of mess dinners, the port passing to left, his horror that ships in the American Navy were dry -

I never had any delicacy when it came to bumpers - I'd gulp them down - I can remember drinking wine with Annick - it was Christmas Eve - there was a tiny Christmas Tree in her bed sit in Winchester - I sat in a armchair, cloaked in a great coat, like a commissar - she rolled skinny cigarettes between gulps with her clever tender fingers - in the Cathedral, the long nave was filled with angels - we'd been delivering leaflets for some cheapskates - we threw most of them away - I was wearing round rimmed glasses - Annick smelled of smoke -

I'd seek out pubs and delight in their different atmospheres - I especially liked small country pubs, with a melancholy juke box, or seething bars with wild boys playing electric guitars -

But since my diagnosis of bowel cancer, three years ago, I've cut down on drinking - I share a bottle of beer a week with Anne - I go the gym - I daydream whilst I'm on the Bike Excite - I've lost weight - I've had to put an extra notch in my belt -

We bought some bottles of real ales for Christmas, lining them up upon the kitchen worktop - although we left them unopened, I could still sense their glamour -

Injections, thinking of India ...

An hour or so ago, a slim nurse gave me my last Rabies and Hepatitis B jabs - she moved deftly and very quickly, injecting the vaccines with uncanny skill - I offered my right arm first, for the Hepatitis B vaccine, then my left arm for the rabies vaccine - my right arm is now tingling, but the left arm feels unaffected -

My dad told me how he and his messmates took to their hammocks, when they had their jabs for the tropics - I imagined them, in a sweltering cruiser, the fans whirring above their heads, their arms swollen with new anti-bodies - later, they would gulp down their tots, breath exotic sultry air - the chill of Pompey would leave their young bones - 

Since my diagnosis of Bowel Cancer, countless needles have pierced my veins - I have lost my boyhood fears of injections - I had to beguiled to sit still when getting my jabs - look over there, Chris - there's a submarine - I can remember, even now, the long grey shape in the harbour, framed by the window of the surgery - 

Now, preparing for a jaunt to Cochin, we are getting our jabs - Len and his wife, Christine, had visited India a few years ago - Len told me that as soon as he left the pristine jet, he smelt spices, dust and ordure - a veteran of the school dining hall at Portchester, Len was unfazed by the demanding crowds - 

I glance at my India Visa, and at the page in the Times Atlas showing Cochin, or Kochi - already, I am starting to be consumed by excitement - yet, also, a boy from narrow roads, it all still seems a dream - 

Leaving East Stoke to see my parents for Christmas, looking at Christmas Cards ...

We stayed at my mum and dad's on Boxing Day - we'd left East Stoke late Christmas Day afternoon - floodwater swirled over the water meadows - it was dark by four thirty - rain drops patterned the windscreen of the red Peugeot - 

Earlier that day, I'd stood upon the bridge, listening to the swollen river, gazing up at the clouds - swans gathered near the fisherman's bench, which marked the bank of a meander - in the summer, I'd sunbathe there, my eyes half closed - I'd picture sirens, swimming amongst the reeds - they were sinuous as eels, watchful as pike -

The level crossing gates were open - Big Bob sat inside the hut - there were no trains - Bob's Mitsubishi Warrior pick-up was parked in the lane -

The M 27 was almost empty - Portsmouth was a shining magic city - we dropped Tessa off for her night shift at Victoria Lodge - 

My heart ached when I saw my parents - time goes by said my dad - he sat in his armchair like a delicate bird - my mum remembered how she'd loved dancing - I was in a different world -

Christmas cards covered every surface, each one with its well intentioned message - 

Perhaps, in some dream, I would enter this same lounge, piled high with cards, too many to count - they were all the cards my mum and dad had ever been sent - dust and shadows moved towards me - 

The storm before Christmas ...

As always, I paid little or no interest to the BBC weather casts - I'd admired the whirlpools of isobars, the severe beauty of the weather girl, but I had the TV sound turned off - 

We'd gone to Sainsburys in Wareham, marvelling at the staff dressed as elves - the store manager wore a fluffy jumper bedecked with flashing lights - 

Whilst we wondering which red grapefruit to buy, the sky darkened - immense clouds hung in the sky like swollen airships - icy rain lashed the supermarket car park - gusts of wind stirred roof tiles - shoppers hid beneath their umbrellas, splashing through brimming puddles - brogues were soaked, rain drops streamed down wax jackets - 

Sophie and Tessa were with us in The Old School House by the mid evening - by then, it had been raining for many hours - the wind was now gusting at over 60 miles per hour, driving the rain against the skylights - outside, the valley was a dark swirling void - 

Then, slyly, implacably, drops of rain water fell from the ceiling - fingers of damp ran along the plaster - Anne was resolution personified - buckets and trays collected the drops of water - Turkish rugs were rolled back - phone calls made to insurance drones - 

The next morning, the rain had stopped, the mad wind had gone - the ceiling was still intact - 

The water meadows were flooded - Big Bob told me there was only one train per hour - I stood on the bridge, listening to the swollen river, looking out over a grey flooded world - 

I thought of Paul's mum and dad - the Humber had swept into South Ferriby - a tidal surge had inundated half the village - I felt so ashamed of my panic the night before -

The Christmas Mantlepiece ...

Two weeks ago or so, Anne decorated the mantelpiece for Christmas - Penny had found the holly in the plantation behind the Stokeford Arms - we'd walked through the dark pines, climbing over fallen branches, brushing past withered, dripping, ferns - the air smelt of resin and damp earth - the tops of the pines were swaying in the wind -

Whilst Anne spoke to Tessa on her I phone, Penny and I gathered the holly - the holly tree overlooked the sand pits, where you could find the tracks of deer - gorse bushes marked the steep drop to the sand pits - we'd once explored this strange zone - time was different there, gathered in silent folds, rippling over the drifts of sand - deep pools reflected unknown faces -

Penny handed me the secateurs, and I cut off the small branches of holly - the leaves pricked my fingers - we could see the Purbeck Hills across the river valley - shaggy horses grazed in field bordering the plantation - the sun was low in the sky -

As we made our way back, under the cover of the pines, we became aware that the sun was setting - a golden light illuminated the bracken - we heard sombre bird song -

Later, Anne placed the holly upon the mantelpiece, along with pine cones and tender sprigs of pine - she put a candle in old glass medicine bottle we'd found by a rabbit hole in the garden - on the right hand side of the mantelpiece was a photograph of Lee Miller by Man Ray - 

I lit the fire with a fistful of matches - the apple logs burnt with a fierce fragrant heat - we listened to some music by Ballake Sissoko - outside, in the night, the old year turned to the new - 

Burger Bar laments ...

Walking towards Havant's Waitrose on an errand for my mum, I passed Macdonalds, with its pale occupants, snarfing strange meats - young men in white base ball caps headed for The Papermakers - mobility scooters carried their corpulent riders towards the Meridien Shopping Centre - 

There were stalls set up in the pedestrianised street for the Saturday Market - a bravo offered to unlock mobile phones - thin men in red fleeces darted back and forth behind a barricade of vegetables, shouting out their blandishments - lovely caulis, ripe tomatoes, two for a pound - 

I then saw a burger stall - the boy was stirring a pyramid of sizzling onion rings 

- I remembered the times when, half cut with drink, I'd bolted burgers in a midnight precinct - I heard again, in my head, the car radio, playing American laments -

Icy rain fell upon the grey pavement - I thought of Larkin's words - home is so sad - 

A visit to Aldi's, exploring a new supermarket world ...

Gilray or Rowlandson would surely enjoy a visit to a Morrisons or a Tesco - they would be able to sketch a rare gallery of creatures with their darting, forensic, pens - 

Whenever I'm with Sophie or Tessa, wheeling our trolley past the queue for the scratch cards, we mouth silently to each other our anthem  for such occasions - oh, the humanity - 

I have sometimes strayed into an Asda so large it could house an airship - I have stared, fascinated, at the carpets of ham,  the unending vistas of ready meals, nets of clementines and trays of ferocious lagers - 

Two weeks before Christmas, we visited an Aldi in Poole - 

Varnsey swore by Worthing's Aldi - there, he said, he could buy sacks of chestnuts, millstones of Camembert, fish the size of torpedoes and still have enough change from a fiver for a pint of Doom Bar - 

So it was we wandered past a Great Wall of China made from tins of dog food, an artful installation of jammy dodgers - 

I could stay here all day, I thought, looking at these mid European brand names, learning a new supermarket etiquette - 

The savage ode ...

From time to time, I've written poetry - I reckon there's about twenty poems saved on my lap top - each one is my own precious creature - I hunted each word, I shaped each sinew - 

I was nervous, therefore, when Richard told me Maggie had invited me to a poetry workshop - 

What poem should I choose to read? What judgements might these published poets make?

I sat amidst Richard's archives, whilst he wrote out a neat copy of his latest poem - through the gap in the curtains, I could glimpse parked cars and the terraced houses opposite, each one with its poignant history, its narrow rooms full of ghosts - 

Looking for a photocopier, we went into a tiny shop, near The Golden Eagle - it was  fragrant with the smell of curry - a sad eyed Bangla sat beside the till - Richard told me that he used to wheel Kate here in her buggy, a world ago - 

We found a photocopier in a computer joint on Albert Road, snarfed a heady dhal in the Balti House - 

Maggie drove us to the workshop - you could hear the song of the M27 outside the house -

The judgements made of my poem were just, spoken gently, yet they hit their mark - I learned much - 

The next morning, Richard and I went for a stroll along Southsea front - the icy sea rolled over sharp pebbles - benches in the rose garden had brass plates commemorating beloved dead people - 

We saw a metal door, with a savage ode daubed upon it -

Who was the poet, I wondered - what strange fires burned within his eyes?

The India Visa photograph ...

Yesterday, our passports were returned to us, along with our Indian visas - the DX courier had rung me on his mobile, his words almost drowned by spooky static - the Sat Nav had taken him over the level crossing, up into Highwood, amongst the dark firs -

I had to go out to find the courier - he had dreadlocks and was wearing a bright green tee shirt - he gestured towards the level crossing gates - I got lost, stuck on the other side of the line - that guy there, he saw me, yet he said nothing - I guessed that Big Bob had been on duty at the level crossing - 

In my Visa photograph, I'm glowering at the camera - Jay said - you look like Molotov - I imagined myself, watching Charlie Chaplin films in the Kremlin, signing warrants - 

My passport photograph is not much better - when we were in Herceg Novi, Goran, our driver had looked at it - he smiled his cruel smile - is criminal! - 

Later Goran told us that Montenegro was the stolen car capital of Europe - you will find your car, outside my house - 

Watching the Desolation of Smaug in The Rex, Wareham ...

One of my pleasures nowadays is going to The Rex - I can buy a Merlot in the tiny bar, glance up at a signed poster of Brief Encounter - I've been warned about the double seats at the back of the auditorium - the springs have a habit of sneaking out and biting you - 

I can loll in my 90 minutes seat - I gulp my robust bumper whilst watching adverts for cars and Red Bull - lean men ski off mountain peaks, racing over snowy slopes with dancing skis - powerful shapely BMW saloons race through red deserts - 

I eat my tub of Purbeck Icecream - the trailers follow the adverts - there's Audrey Tatou, perched upon a Vespa, slender and lovely, melting a boy's heart - there's George Clooney, wisecracking and smouldering - there's a blue planet filling the sky - 

I immerse myself in the film being shown with a shameless abandon - so it was this week, with The Desolation of Smaug -

For almost three hours, I forgot my shameful anxieties - dwarfs stroked their beards, brooded upon wrongs and hewed orc necks - skin changers roared - elves glittered with immortality and moved with terrible swiftness - a dragon fixed me with its subtle wicked eye - wizards gave wise counsel, battled against a ravening darkness - spiders gossiped and hissed over their cocooned captives - orcs rode monstrous beasts - the hobbit kept hidden a heart twisting secret - 

When I left the cinema, I was still in Middle Earth - I walked past the life sized cardboard cut out of Charlie Chaplin, adorned this Christmas season with tinsel - the Master of Lake Town was lurching out of The Antelope - 

I wonder what secrets those I loved kept locked away - perhaps, I thought, if I looked upwards, I'd see blue butterflies, waltzing over the roofs of Wareham - 

Walking to Havant Railway Station, leaving Hanna Reitsch in the kitchen ...

A few weeks ago, I caught an early morning train for London - I'd stayed with my mum and dad the night before, and watched Poirot on ITV 3 - as always, I admired Chief Inspector Japp's mac, the 1930s Art Deco cocktail cabinets, the slim figure of the murderess - 

I'd eaten my breakfast glancing at photographs of relatives - there was my brother, there was my Aunty Dot,  with her fierce hair - there was my clever niece, Lucille, now living in East Berlin - 

The washing machine was just starting to roar in the kitchen - Anne said it sounded like a small aircraft, perhaps a Fi 156 Storch, I thought - Hanna Reitsch might be talking to my mum, drinking Nescafé -

When I walked through the small streets to the railway station, the quiet houses were still full of sleep - faces were hidden in the clouds - telephone wires reached out into living rooms - 

I walked through the park, past the cricket pavilion - the side screens glimmered in the pale light - wild girls gathered here every evening, smoking, joshing their boys - 

The Station Cafe in the precinct had just opened its doors - a jet shone in the sky - the train was on time - 

Thomas Hardy's heart ...

I've never read Thomas Hardy - in truth, all I've done is sigh over the cover of Tess of the d'Ubervilles, or nervously handle an icy volume of his poems, perhaps the 1998 Penguin Selected Poems - I just have the impression, whenever I think of the man, of implacable fate, of lives mangled by mischance, of icy sorrows -

As one of my former colleagues, a head of year, used to say - I can't be doing with that - I can see her now, sitting like Boudica with a lap top in her office -

I did once watch one episode of Jude the Obscure, serialised on BBC 2 in the 1970's - the young Robert Powell played Jude - that was enough - I'd only just got over Toby's death in Doom Watch - we all wore black arm bands in the sixth form common room -

That was worlds ago - I'm now a gaffer with a shock of white hair - true, I've prowled around Max Gate, glowered in Dortchester before a house allegedly used as the model for Henchard's in Mayor of Casterbridge - yet, still, I've never read Hardy -

This September, on a walk with Penny and Anne, I visited Stinsford Church - Pesvner says the church is mostly 13th Century - I was much taken by the lichened gargoyles, pulling open their mouths with lichened fists -

It was a warm afternoon - thin clouds moved across the blue sky - inside the church, it was full of light - I admired the organ pipes - they looked like blue cigars - there were many memorial tablets, upon which I could brood - I imagined the quiet privileged lives of the local gentry, the deferential peasantry, the arrack punch in crystal bowls -

But then I saw, set below a richly decorated stained glass window, a brass tablet, telling me Hardy's heart lies buried in this village -

I thought of the symbolism of this interment - the heart, plucked out from Hardy's opened torso - placed here, in this gentle earth, not amidst the tawdry pomp of Westminster Abbey -

I resolved to read some Hardy - perhaps it was time for me to hear some raw truths -

The balcony in Malta, tempus fugit, venit umbra ...

Two or three years ago, we flew to Malta - I wanted, if I could, to find the stone house where I'd lived as a boy - the sleek jet transported me through time as well

through shining air - 

I shut my moleskine, put away my clever biro - once more, I was perched upon my seat in the RAF transport plane, wide eyed and quivering with joy and terror - I was watching its wings judder when we encountered turbulence - one of the cabin crew had reassured me - soon afterwards, we'd landed - for the first time I felt the warmth of a pagan sun upon my skin -  

We found the stone house, opposite the church, in Norfolk Street - the house was called Dahlia - at the end of the street was a tiny shop, like a fragrant cave - you went inside through a beaded curtain, brushing away plump flies - you could buy black bread, which you daubed with thick dollops of tomato paste - 

There was the rocky shore, where I learned to swim and became brown, darting through the warm sea - 

Later, we tracked down Hibernia House, where we'd had a second floor flat - I'd lie down in the cool corridor, my body burning, staring up at the ceiling - I'd swallow my salt tablets at my mum's urgings - she might wrap a wet sheet around me - 

At the time of our visit, cancer had just touched me with its dark fingers, although I hid the mark on my side - 

Last week, at my mum and dad's, I found this photograph, in its little oval frame - 

I'm standing with my brother, on the balcony of the flat - my shorts are held up by an s shaped belt clip - we've both got crew cuts - we're oblivious to the shapes clustered in the bright street - they'll form our future selves - how many more shapes, I wonder, are now gathering behind me, as I sit here, turning up the light?

My dad's Navy tool chest ...

Helping my dad put away the shopping trolley, I saw his old Navy tool chest, stowed away at the back of the immaculate garage, with its rows of shiny garden forks and the gleaming lawnmower - 

My dad had made the tool chest himself - he'd taken it on board the ships he served on - he was a deft young shipwright, arguing with the padre - 

The chest was part of my boyhood - there it was in the garden shed, with my dad's name stencilled on the side - 

We moved three times - each address marked a different stage in my parents' lives - each road had its own unique characteristics - 

There was an alley behind Sedgeley Grove full of jungly bushes where skinny boys could hide in their dens - opposite our house in Palmyra Road was a wool shop where mum had a part time job - I can still smell the rich, oily, scent of the wool - one of our neighbours in Helsted Close read Homes and Gardens - she used to give me a wafer of cream cake, laid upon a tiny china plate - 

Inside the tool chest was a rich hoard of chisels, hammers and hand drills - I treasured the placid wooden box plane - my dad once made me a wooden fort, with four towers and neat crenellations - I tucked my head under his arm even as he cut and sawed the thin wood - 

Seeing the tool chest, I felt like a boy again, shivering in my grey short trousers,  my knees badged with bruises - my dad was no longer a small bent figure - I saw him, once again, sweeping a chisel through wood with the brio of a bullfighter swirling his cape - 

Starting to read Alan Garner's "Boneland" ...

There are only a few books, a dozen or so, which I have taken to my heart - they have shown me wonders, strange dreams, earthly delights, terrible secrets - I have wanted their pages to go on forever - 

So it is with Alan Garner's Boneland - I read The Weirdstone of Brisingamen

 when I was twelve - I looked out of my bedroom window - I could see the serene warriors, spellbound and sleeping, under our tiny lawn - svarts crept down the alley -

When I finished The Moon of Gomrath, I felt Susans's wild joy mixed with grief - I longed to ride a horse upon whose shining back I would reach the stars - I felt, too, Colin's despair - 

Now I am reading Boneland - already, I am beguiled - the text is flinty, requiring effort - yet I can see bright mystery there - 

The Musicians of Langton Matravers ...

Last Sunday, Anne and I went to Langton Matravers Village Hall - we heard austere medieval German carols, furious jigs, exquisite laments - the two musicians were Chris Newman, who played guitar, and Maire Ni Chathasaigh who played harp -

It was the harper's name that drew my eye in Wareham Library - it was a name, I thought, of savage and ancient lineage - 

I imagined a raven haired woman, gazing at a dark storm tossed sea - later she would leap into the waves, jewelled with spray - the sun would be setting behind ice shattered mountains - 

We drove to Langton Matravers in the dark - never had the night seemed so jet black, the plunging lanes so narrow - 

But the village hall was warm, glowing with light, jam packed with shining eyed oldsters - there were photographs on the walls of the school teachers who'd taught here, fiercely corseted, in their dark dresses -

Maire did not disappoint me - she had a wicked smile, a lilting brogue, cascades of wild hair, tumbling over her white forehead - she wore a savage black dress that clung to her figure - around her neck was a heavy silver necklace - her big strong fingers plucked at the strings of the golden harp - 

Chris Newman, in his collarless white shirt, was a genial virtuoso, an apt foil to the statuesque harper - he was, I think, the better musician - his guitar sounded at times like a sizzling fiddle, then a haunted cello - 

The performance ended with a lament for Eleanor Plunkett - the notes of the harp were like icy tears, or frozen kisses, each one perfect - 

 

 

Walking in Jane's garden ...

Walking in Jane's Garden

Jane shows me round her garden -

I'm far away from my world of care -

There are the olive trees, she says - Look, there are the orange trees -

I can smell wood smoke in the early morning air -

I can look upon the mountains, with their firs and firebreaks -

I can see the sky is the palest, faintest, blue

I know that down in the valley is the ragged village,

With its tea gardens, jandarma and forge -

The roads are potholed, full of dust, or brimming with floodwater after rain -

 I've seen old men, with dark brown, archaic, faces -

Old women, bent double, under burdens of oak tree branches for their goats -

I've met the village headsman, the mukhtar, so positive and energetic -

Ken, rightly, says he looks like Darren from "Bewitched" -

I  watched it while my mum made me beans on toast, a world ago -

- Jane, when I'm with you in this garden,

Far away from my world of care,

I'm no longer a man cast out of ash -

I can feel every moment like a wonderful story -

I can feel every past happiness and sadness, with no regret or wounding -

I can see your story, too -

Your story shines in the air -

Like the leaves of your olives - silvery grey - beautiful -

Each one perfect - responding to the wind, turning to the sun

Little Woolgarten, remembering a ghost story ...

Late one afternoon in November, when the sky was full of troubled cloud, we set off down Corfe High Street, jackets firmly buttoned, warmed by gloves and alpaca socks - 

Terraced cottages had small windows, through which you could catch glimpses of dark furniture, or silvered mirrors - shadowy figures climbed narrow stairs - lichened stone roof tiles were worn by centuries of frost and rain - 

Red brick Victorian villas stood back from the narrow pavement - sun dials stood on mossy plinths, glistening laurel hid mysterious gardens - 

We walked along the high chalk ridge, overlooking Corfe and Poole Harbour - yachts sailed between strangely shaped islands, along twisting creeks - sheep stared at us as we moved past them - 

Once off the ridge, in Little Woolgarten, we came across a strange weatherboarded house, reached by a lane lined with hawthorn -

We all fell silent - I thought of the story, Brickett Bottom, classified by Montagu Summers as one of "malevolent mystery" - perhaps I'd hear a thin voice, calling out my name - when we came here again, all we'd see would be a tangle of brambles and contorted trees - 

We turned away, heading across a boggy common towards Larksgate - there were circles of ash, where gorse bushes had been burned - an icy wind stung my face -