Jottings on a stormy night...

Some things can’t be forgotten they remain in your head no matter what. We had one of those raging storms on my last night in Wales. Not a long one; a few hours of rain and gusting wind, followed by forty minutes of terrifying howling - the driving rain bouncing off my window hard - and the cry of lost souls screeching down the lane.

Four o’clock in the morning and only a few children's wax crayons (thrown to the back of the drawer and left to flake and gather fluff and dust) to hand.

I scribble as I am sometimes expected to do. Outside in the dark, the lane turns to a muddy track as wagons, pulled by large sad horses, carry brandy up from the dead-of-night beach, wheels sinking axle-deep in the mud. Unmarked sheep huddle in the corners of small hedged fields and vainly bleat against the wind. Canvass flaps and, indoors (although not in sight) paraffin lamps gutter in the draught from the tiny cottage windows.

Time travel; caused by the wind and rain and the early hour; taking me back to this place a hundred, a hundred and fifty years ago. Another stormy night in my imagination; three-master rigs still being built upon the beach and barrels of brandy moved on up to the chapel high on the hill on some other stormy tonight.

There’s something about this place; something old, something passed, something not quite gone; almost (although not quite) a bridal charm. Perhaps it’s the surrounding of the fields hardly changed for hundreds of years, the mountains and the not too distant sea, the standing stones scattered all across the fields, that centuries old chapel high on the hill. Perhaps it's ghosts, shadows of another time, a record captured and sometimes allowed to rerun like an old film. There’s something about this place that takes me back to somewhere I have never been but seem to know and be comforted by.

Imagination or an echo? I don’t know, but I scribble on anyway until it is out. What else can I do?