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| River Lune, Kirkby Lonsdale |
Staying at the Old Vicarage again, this time to read, with others, at the Book Lounge, in Kirkby Lonsdale. This local bookshop has an area at the back with tables and chairs, in front of an old-style fireplace, which is where we read. Lots of questions from the audience, about Sally Evans’ novel Wildgoose and my book about Annemarie Schwarzenbach, The Buoyancy of the Craft. (Unfortunately, Karen Lloyd was unwell and could not attend.)
Earlier that day, walking back from Kirkby Lonsdale I find a new footpath from Colliers Lane. First it crosses fields, then forms a narrow strip by gardens, comes out over a stile with a wobbly post, into the village, next to the garage. 
The big tree beyond the Old Vicarage garden is as graceful as ever, but has no leaves yet. It’s an ash. Its slender branches hang down and swing in the wind. I think a year is more like a breath to that tree. The rooks go – yah, yah, wibodeh, yah yah. The tree at the foot of the garden beyond the beck is pale green. The dark firs align with shadows, a different territory and time. Honeysuckle slides up the front wall of the house and its waving leafy branches dangle outwards towards the slope of the garden, downhill to the beck.
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The house always has different things to say. The attic bedroom floor is wooden, thick uncovered beams. They are dark and polished with age. The windows are very small and square. I manage to open one of them, just a little. It stays open. I hear the first bird in the morning, breaking the silence with an array of trills and melody. Just after that the church clock struck – five am.
The magnolia tree has shed some blossom in a thick white scatter on the grass.
In the evening the rooks caw and flit between sequoia and two pine trees. They favour the dark trees and the shadows.
Most of what the house and garden talk about are states of mind, of moods that cluster in the blue sky and change and pass, the commentaries of the clouds. You could spend days there, walking up and down the steps and slopes of garden and the house would welcome you each time you stepped inside.
It watches from the windows and keeps at least one eye on you. It shelters you, its wooden beams surround your dreams, a night-boat to carry you across the ford of sleep – and bring you back. The gardener leaves wild places for the flowers and insects, and a dead tree offers insect hospitality. The garden thrums with life and the house surveys the garden from above, a castle overlooking its domain.
Evening pastoral, from the footpath
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