East or west who knows what’s least or best? I thought I had a firm grip on the compass, especially after those jaunts on the moor (a few years ago now) when I found myself stranded in the mist. At least I still knew, or believed I did, which was up and which was down. For that matter even on the clearest of days landmarks which were strikingly present a moment ago disappear, only to be replaced by those gently graded hills that refuse to give any distinctive feature. But then, here I am squatting atop a tor in the early evening of lengthening shadows, soft muted colours faded into a sort of perfection, in fact perhaps it could be likened to that certain glory which brings peace. And for those moments all is well with the world.
Though at the same time as being very precisely in this exact spot – identifiable with a carefully placed X on the appropriate O.S. 1:25000 sheet – yes X marks the spot – as I was saying, at the same time I am being pulled into a dream, a pulling that is gravitational, what physicists seem to call a weak force, but at the same time inexorable. Weak is always a relative term.
When I can no longer battle to follow the pseudo narrative, the politics of the Bullingdon vandals: Look! Look! See how we’ve got them all jumping through hoops, what glorious fun, hehe! They’ve swallowed every single one of our hooks. And we’ve persuaded them that we just have to allow those swollen bellied bankers to keep their snouts in the trough. Wonderful isn’t it. There’s only so much one can stand of all that and so that's where this other world of dream comes in. I guess it’s the wilderness territory of poetry and isn’t it wonderful when you discover a novel that holds its place in that same mythic place. You know that image of Michelangelo’s in the Sistine Chapel in which God’s finger touches mankind’s finger, it must be an image of the birth of myth.
Ah, at long last, we’ve stopping for the night, I’ve managed to catch up with the rest of you and the fire is already lit, stars blaze in the near black velvet of the sky, there is laughter, ribald conversation and the stamp of the horses. Somebody pours me a coffee and it’s your turn to pick up the narrative.