It’s getting colder, or at least feels that way, after the hooley of last nights winds it’s pretty still this campervan morning. The occasional breeze sending a shimmer through the Oak and nearby Ash. The interminable roar from nearby roads is quite pronounced once more as well as a distant car alarm. Above that can be heard the chatter of birds who seem busy, a few ducks as well as a far off cockerel. The morning is yet to take shape, the best I can tell is that it appears cloudy once more, but it’s too dark to be sure. The coffee is getting colder quicker and quicker these days, winter is coming, hat and scarf are the early morning norm now. A couple of crows cawing between trees shake up the soundscape. The more I read about crows, magpies and ravens the more I have come to like them. Suburbia appears to be waking with car door slams and start ups. Apparently there’s some sort of kick about going on across the globe somewhere which feels utterly underwhelming. Here, plans underway for a journey north in a week or so for theatre, walks, air and pictures. I have been reflecting on the joy of being connected to a place. Something I have written about many times. The attachment to a place, the uncovering of elements of the self in a place. Not just woods, trees and huge vistas, but the history held within buildings, footpaths, halls, walls and rooms. If only they could talk, what secrets they would whisper and I think they would whisper. Standing on century old bridges in remote parts of Scotland, touching the walls and sensing centuries of traffic passing over it, ruined castles and their tales, standing in front of Dickens’ writing desk, reading old texts of places that you are stood in and feeling the writer is with you. Boswell and Johnson’s writings on their trip to the highlands spring to mind, as well as Dickens and the streets of London and Rochester. Maybe nonsense, I don’t know. Connections to places this morning. Lovely days people.
“ Whatever that place is, I don't much care -- not unless a book has happened there.” Joyce Rachelle.
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