After the clocks went forward…

If I were a writer, a real one, I might go to Wales to write. In Wales the strangest whims pop into my mind and for a second or two seem grand and important, instead of the nonsense they must surely be.

Perhaps it’s the landscape or the light. I don’t know, but I can feel that the stories are out there surrounding me. Sometimes I feel one pass me by, brushing me with its tale like an invisible black cat missing me in the dark. I can almost taste them; in the bend of a tree, the tumble of an old ruined cottage, the sound of a passing car late in the night. I start up the story and then I let it drift away to nothing. Of course everything I write is a bit of a story; it’s just that I’m not very good at the plot. Besides, some might say that I lost that long ago and they may be right.

With that extra hour of light it seems tardy not to simply stand and stare. So standing outside in my field watching the sun go down – later today than yesterday by an hour or more – and listening to the cold breeze in the electricity wires, another story darts past me in the body of a hare thumping its way across the field to God knows where. What will be there at the end of that run towards the deep red sky? Family, fox, a shotgun? Or maybe some strangely shimmered change from hare to hunter, feather jaunty in his black-brimmed hat, eyes shadowed, a flick of his ebony whip, then off on the chase once more.

There’s always a tale to tell even when there is no teller to tell it. Stories do not unfurl simply because there is nobody to see them unfurling, they just get on with it. Maybe one day I’ll catch one before it slips through my fingers. Who knows?