Madeleines on the way to York, a noble truth written upon a blackboard ...

We drove from Low Wray to South Ferriby via York, spending the afternoon there - when we passed Gargrave, I remembered how I'd visited Malham Cove with Richard - 

Somehow, in a pub, or at a party, we'd met a girl from Tallahassee - she called me pilgrim - her mother was renting, or owned, a small dwelling not far from the Cove - the girl from Tallahassee's name was Mary - we did our best to charm her - she invited us to spend some time with her at the Cove -

A gang of us went up, including Geoff - Geoff wore a flying jacket and sported a spooky Fu Manchu moustache - I drove Richard's new yellow Datsun up the M1 - 

One evening there was a party in a nearby farmhouse - for some reason I didn't go - Richard told me what happened - some dark woman offered to read everyone's fortune - Geoff passionately refused - a fracas ensued - there was a stuffed owl, under a glass dome, placed upon a bookcase - 

I can remember the icy stream, flowing past the corrugated iron shieling - there were tall thistles in the fields - Mary's mother smoked very long thin cigarettes - we all thought we were poets, vagabonds, seers, singer song writers -

Road signs were my Madeleines, I thought - memory was like an Instagram, enriching the present - 

I then recalled the words I'd seen, written upon a blackboard, in Wray Castle - even at 88 you can see new things -