Along the coast past the vast sweeping hook of the bay then on to the flat plain at the foot of the ridge. Right at the crossroads down through the lush green, sun dappled valley, and upwards into the hard, bright light toward the bracken and heather covered moor, with its dolmen and bronze age barrows, home to a thousand faeries and ubiquitous sheep.

Left then, past the church and the cross with the old bell that says ‘Ora pro nobis Sancte Maria’. Past the castle on the hill, along the drangway until I’m home. Not my home, but a home that is deep in my blood and in my soul.

I know this mighty theatre, my footsole knows it for mine.

I am nearer the rising peewit’s call than the shiver of her own wing.

I ascend in the loud waves’ thunder, I am under the last of the nine.

In a hundred dramatic shapes I perish, in the last I live and sing.

Taliesin…. Vernon Watkins.

The old house stands empty, with its forlorn For Sale sign battered by the sea winds.  It smells of damp, and my fathers stale tobacco. There are no voices now, no children running through its untended garden. Choose some wine will you son, dinner will be ready soon. 

My mother is frail, like a small injured bird, and I can feel the bones in her back as I hug her. The dressings on her arms, from her most recent fall, need changing. I must phone the doctor. 

Have you taken those pills? No. Why not they’ll help you. I don’t know which ones to take? I’ve told you a hundred times. I scold myself for my impatience. Be kind, she’s lost her husband of sixty years. She’s dressed for lunch, she looks forward to these outings like a child. I less so.

Let us stand, then in the interval of our wounding, 

till the silence turn golden and love is a moment eternally overflowing.

Evening……R.S. Thomas.

My father smokes a pipe, it will come to kill him. A pipe is archaic, it’s not cool like a cigarette or opulent like a cigar. It takes dedication and generous pockets. The pouch, the cleaning, scraping and poking tools, the pipe itself, of which there may be more than one, plus matches – it’s best not to light a pipe with a lighter. The pipe demands a jacket, and some sturdy leather soled brogues to tap the bowl against to dislodge the spent tobacco. My father was often in corduroy or tweed and hated the summer months.’The seasons are all potential assassins’ as Alan Bennett said. 

He’d light the pipe whilst driving, the car veering from side to side, pungent smoke billowing from its smouldering bowl and filling the car as I sat in the back with the dogs. I glance at his armchair – another thing I shall have to get rid of – and see him, deep in contemplation, blowing clouds of smoke before falling asleep clutching its warm bowl, and on waking would take a sip of his now cold tea. I realise how many hours I must have spent watching him, perhaps to better understand him, and when I finally thought I knew I realised I had no more questions to ask.

We can ask and ask but we can’t have again what once seemed ours forever….J.L. Carr.