Wafflehead

[smokingboot]

The final story is one of me,
Who with four minutes left
has used up three...

You know you need sleep when your mood is best described by Mark Owen lyrics.Most important is thanks to everyone who has responded with good wishes and kindness re recent stuff that has happened. You are amazing in your generosity and you lifted our hearts.

Update will wait. I refuse to write about reality until it is real. I am too tired to think, but there's no chance of sleep either. Instead, I just let the keyboard dance away. The wind is in the trees and it makes me homesick for the sea, which is silly, because I never lived near it.


There is an imaginary house in my head; I used to think it was on the Brecon Beacons, but that can't be right because they don't meet the sea. No, this house backs onto the cliffs, and the wind howls around it most savagely.In the summer you could go by a cliff path down to the beach, and even swim if you wanted to, though there is said to be a monster in the waters which likes to surface on warm days and nights. Not true that; when I see it, it presages storm, and is as likely to appear in winter as in summer.

No people live around here: I think they just die somewhere else, or wade out and let the monster eat them. In any case, there are no other houses here, just this place, once owned by a magician who himself swam out to see the creature. They say he may still be around here somewhere. He left his telescope, his books and this creaking house, surrounded by sea-holly and briars. There was a great garden, a maze and topiary; there are still people lost or playing in it, and you can go join them if you want to. I saw them once, and they were having a picnic in the sunshine. They didn't know they were lost. They wore Edwardian clothes, and they laughed as though tigers still waited to be bagged in Injah and strawberries would always be picked by ready servants, as though lawns were for croquet and men were for cricket, and no war could ever touch their eternal summer. There are others lost in the maze too, but don't watch them too closely: some are too beautiful, some are shadows and some are best forgotten. The house, of course, has forgotten nothing.

There are standing stones further inland, nearer the roads. Salsify grows on the cliffs, and saxifraga, pink and white, fairy gardens, they call it. The mountains rise north and south. Sometimes you see small boats, and indeed, there is a little boat, tipped upside down on the sands. If you get into that boat and go out to sea, you will never come back. The boat comes back. I should like to get into the boat and see where it goes; I'm not really afraid of never coming back, but right now, I can't. Too much to do.

So instead, I leave my room at the top of the house, where the wind sings like violins above the waves and the treetops. I go downstairs to the magician's study, full of books and warmth, old maps and instruments, prints and pictures. He may be a ghost, but he has supplied food and a roaring fire, and stories too, for when I wake; dinner may be later, and we shall talk then, but for now I lie out on the great rug in front of the fire, while the trees cradle the brewing storm, and I sleep.


Well, at least it got that stupid song out of my head. Some time soon, I will write a sensible update.