Sitting in Coleridge's bedroom at Allan Bank ...

It took us a while to find Allan Bank - we'd parked the wounded Peugeot in a tricksy car park in Grassmere - we edged past the muzzles of vicious Range Rovers -

The Grassmere Guzzler Beer and Music Festival was well under way - young men in rain soaked tee shirts flocked to Tweedies Bar - later, the willowy Polish girl would tell us - there are eighteen restaurants in Grassmere - 

We'd driven past the lake on our way here - the water was an oval of stippled glass - icy rain drops fell from the low clouds - I looked at the island in the middle of the lake - I saw there, in my mind's eye, Wordsworth and Coleridge, dancing round their glorious bonfire - there was Dorothy Wordsworth, with her clear, perceptive, gaze -

We stepped inside the National Trust shop to ask the way - the crotchety woman, with her arras of tea towels, was terse with her directions - perhaps the rain water dripping from our cagoules offended her, or my rug was too wild -

The house was reached by a steeply sloping track - we stared up at its white walls and huge windows -

Once inside, we were embraced by a warm, disordered, world - the rooms had distressed, roughly plastered, walls - worn Persian rugs covered creaking floor boards - there were shelves of children's books, with artless, vivid, covers -

We made our way around the house - there had been a fire here, a few years ago - charred beams, like dark, half chewed, bones were on display upstairs -

Visitors could paint water colours, draw, doze in comfortable armchairs, drink tea, snarf luscious chunks of coffee cake - kids could play hide and seek in the bedrooms, play with ragged toys - I drew a kindly donkey upon a blackboard -

I sat, in Coleridge's bedroom, reading mountaineering journals - from the windows, you could see the lake, the wooded fells, the turbulent clouds -

I remembered how Coleridge had gone fell walking - he'd lost his way down Scafell Pike - but, stranded upon a narrow ledge, he'd lain there - in a state of almost prophetic Trance & Delight -

I imagined Coleridge, staying here, at Allan Bank, writing in his Notebooks, covering page after page with heartfelt words -