After
toileting my phone and borrowing a brick, I’ve been cameraless for a couple of
days. It’s like when you move a mirror. You don’t realise how often you use it
until you find yourself staring at a portrait of your grandma to see if you
look fit to leave the house. There have been so many things that merited a
snap, and the universe wants me to write them. 
Great Head
House made me laugh. I’ll stay there next time. My airbnb hosts were the best,
but they didn’t offer that! The glory of the bed of copper leaves that had laid
itself out alongside me as I trundled to the station. Perfect, sheened beech
leaves and hiding oak. I looked and looked, trying to drink it in so it would
stay.
Yesterday,
from the top of Hoad Hill, I looked out over mountains. I’ve yearned and
yearned these past few months and though I wasn’t in them, I could smell them.
The smell of Lakeland moss, the crisp of algae-covered stones, animal-scented
fields, the fresh, sweet rich of country. I gazed out over dry-stone walls
weaving through fields, sheep cloud formations, solitary trees. I fed myself on
layer upon layer of distance, this mountain, that moor, this stretch of land.
It took me
back. The Lakes were a childhood summer holiday regular, and a favourite. At
fifteen, me and Corinne Hey (who I admire in her energy, openness and outdoors
prowess, both then and now) took ourselves up to the Lakes to hike. We booked hostels,
loaded up our bags and packed a map. We’d done a little bit of the Prince of
Wales (??) scheme, so it wasn’t our first solo map trip, but not far off. We did Scafell and nearly copped it at one
point – a heavy backpack and a steep up. As memory is, I can’t remember which
of us it was.
I stood and
looked at Coniston, Scafell, and another whose name has gone … I ached to be there, walking, finding our way. I make a promise
now, to take a friend or lover there within the year, to hike and have those
mountains bless us as they did when I was young.
I love the
north. I love how the hills give solace with their presence, no need for
anything. They hold me better than the flat of Somerset, or the rolling downs
of Sussex. I love the stone, the vegetation and the land. And any extra degrees
of cold are more than compensated for in people warmth. I miss it and maybe
I’ll come home and make the north my base.
And what a
time to be here, with autumn throwing itself at the trees with lascivious
abandon. Fire bushes jumping out at me, bushes full of bees despite the cold,
gaudy red rosehips making raspberries look subtle, the treescape pulling focus
from the flowers. Everywhere there is to look, my eyes are spoilt with symphonies
of colour, greenbrownredgoldyellowbronzeandorange, blues and greys and creams
painting the skies, punctuated with black crows: too much beauty to ever get
enough of.
And every
time I come home, I’m greeted by Skye, the crazy-wiry-wired Springer Spaniel.
That really only means walking with her as she strains at the leash until she
does her poo (mostly in the middle of the road) as she’s no house arrest for
spay-scar healing. Her default positions are sitting, lying, flipping on her
back, all including wide eyes and an intense stare. If I sit and work, she sits
at my feet and cleans herself. It was hard to leave her, but her owners are
back soon (my fantastic airbnb hosts, who don’t give head) and I’m on my way
back down to London. I will miss her.
A stream of Halloween photos that make me delight. And, in my
inbox, an email from a hotel so dreadful that I left it almost immediately, and
there was little argument from the staff. I was irritated when I saw it, until
I saw its sign-off: See you soon, Bacon Arms. Don’t call me that! So rude!
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