I can't stand it. I been there before.....

I got to light out for the Territory.....

On Wenlock Edge the wood's in trouble....

When a yellowing, ignorant old rich man gets away with berating a teenage girl who passionately wants to preserve something of this world before it turns into another Mars, something is wrong.

And on Wenlock Edge I am caught between the timber yard, with its piles of stripped timber in the old quarry, and the hedge layer, Len, whose aim is to be able to contain his sheep in fields with natural, living hedges, rather than steel and concrete....

I am uplifted by his openness and geniality.  Sadly I don't find this everywhere. He immediately shows empathy for Amanda's disability.  His brother works on the sound for the Timothy West/Prunella Scales Canal Cruise programmes, so he understands.  

I am uplifted.... He didn't have to talk to us.... 

Somethings may be right, after all.....

Later, I walk along Offa's Dyke, high in the clouds of nothingness.  The trees bent by the prevailing winds,

The tracks full of churned mud, farm equipment idle in the slurry,

There's a beauty in isolation; although the path is well trodden, I encounter no one, which eases me (though perhaps it would be nice to see the views....)

I hear buzzards mewing, and crows arguing, and wonder at the disturbance of birds; then I find their reason: the circle of life.....

Later, after miles of misty trudge, I refresh myself in the Horse and Jockey, in Knighton.  By the old school I encounter Andy Hazell, erstwhile photographer for the Observer, for twenty years inhabitant of this engaging backwater. Curiously, perhaps, we both knew Bruce Lacey (https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/feb/20/farewell-bruce-lacey-multifaceted-artist-who-was-one-of-a-kind) a wonderful example of the kind of eccentric artist we used to celebrate in this country.

Andy is refreshing to talk to, and, like Len, uplifting to me, in that he has a purpose and takes pleasure in what he does....  

http://www.andyhazell.co.uk/

Currently Andy is making a space shuttle, out of assorted findings, including a chicken feeder.  He is neither Elon Musk, nor Donald Tusk, but his inventiveness is glorious. His ambition unfettered.

It is refreshing to talk.  But Andy is moving to Norway.  He has had enough of this land of lies where government doesn't care and opposition is self-centred (my words not his).  

I am reminded that the grass can be greener, and that maybe it is time to move on, to leave behind dissatisfaction and frustration.

'Tis a long way further than Knighton,

A quieter place than Clun,

Where doomsday may thunder and lighten

An little 'twill matter to one.

A E Housman

A Shropshire Lad

Yeah..... Time to step out of myself.

But I reckon I got to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she's going to adopt me and sivilize me, and I can't stand it. I been there before.

Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huck Finn

TESSERAE - 4 - Spoleto, Umbria

SPOLETO

I am standing in the middle of a major road, the SS3, five hundred metres from the mouth of the tunnel under the Castle at Spoleto.  A set of traffic lights has just turned red and nothing appears to be coming toward me.  I seize the opportunity to walk the concrete ribbon and snatch a photo of the castle from a rare standpoint.

I
t’s not the greatest view, but it is not a conventional one.  The road, a modern carriageway though bearing the name of the ancient Via Flaminia, burrows into the hill above the dry Tessino river bed, shafting straight under the fourteenth century Rocca (castle). 

It is eerily quiet.  The light still red, nothing oncoming, I sneak forward to improve the view.   A cowled figure, angular, grey, fleeting, seems to beckon me toward the mouth of the tunnel.  He calls out, but I cannot catch the words in the silence, the idle engines blurring the edges of the call.  I step forward, the road inviting me under the hill, and like a fox I am there, sniffing the dark, padding forward into the gloom.

A scent of sweat and musky blanket precedes me; a stair opens into the rock and the pungency of wool and rope entices me upwards.  The stairs are narrow, dank and slippery, but I can hear the slap of leather sandal on stone above me, and then I am in a cave, a room, a glorious opening, with angels spinning round me in a canopy of blue.  God himself kneels, not for me, of course, but to bless the virgin, his right hand held upright with fingers ranged in benediction,. His left hand gently lowering a golden crown, the very image of his own, onto the virgin’s brow.  His hair and beard, uniformly white but combed and trimmed, connects the jewelled red mitre with the jewelled red coat, his cuffs adorned with gold and precious stones.  His shoulders are kept warm by a green mantle, itself held in place by a golden chain.  The girl is decked in finery beyond the reach of mortal purse, her hands in prayer to beg pardon for her unworthiness.  Gold, pearls, opals, topaz, amethyst – the sheen of silk and lace glittering into the golden sun behind.

The freshness of the paint overcomes me, but Filippo steadies my arm and leads me up the wooden scaffolds, past guttering wicks, and into an enclosed garden, with a tiled patio.  A golden haired angel in a red robe kneels before a doorway, a white lily in the left hand.  From a cloud above a white haired and bearded figure lasers down a message that strikes through a grille and pierces the shoulder of a delicate girl in red and white who sits demurely with her fingers intertwined in shy confusion.  It is the remarkable announcement of an imminent birth that prefigures ultrasound by two millennia. 

We pass through into the crowd, and move past the priest, the mourners and the praying women; past the ashen faced corpse with her delicate hands clasped above a rich orange coverlet; I pass Filippo himself with his angelic son Filippino then I pass the green hills and rocky mounts,

until I stand behind a young woman kneeling before her infant, which lies passively on a cloth on the stony floor, his father humbly musing at his head, a cow and a donkey gently smiling down from behind wicker hurdles. 

I step gingerly on, past a wooden saddle and through an arch in the crumbling wall.  The path leads back down, into a cave, down the slippery steps and I find myself back in the tunnel, hurrying to my car. 

I didn’t notice that the lights had changed.