I was in the village two miles east yesterday morning. Errands. Nothing worth reporting. On the way back I passed Paula the teacher from the primary school. I haven’t seen her since before her maternity leave — eight, nine months ago maybe. She looked the way new mothers look: held together by necessity and not […]
New Haven, Connecticut. 1866. A rifle comes off the line at the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. Model 1866. Brass receiver, polished to a shine. Walnut stock. Smooth action for its era. Nobody marks the occasion. It’s one of a thousand or so. The workers go home. The foreman ticks a number in a ledger. The
Conn O’Cuinn’s Rifle Read More »
There’s a hill in Shropshire that a giant built by accident. That’s the story, anyway. He was carrying a load of earth — stolen from Wales, as tends to happen in these accounts — with the intention of burying a town he’d taken a dislike to. A shoemaker talked him out of it. He dropped
Mythology of Giants Read More »
I’ve known a few people who loved the wrong thing so completely that by the time they understood what it had cost them, there was nothing left. It’s a long, slow destruction. Until the person standing there at the end of it isn’t anything like the person who started. Jegudiel was one of those. I’m
Jegudiel: The Longest Falling Read More »
There was a man in a pub in Carlisle — this would have been the late nineties — who held a table for four hours without buying a round and left with three people’s phone numbers, one person’s car keys, and what I strongly suspect was a signed document of some kind. Nobody saw him
On a train. Headed south. The roads are impossible this time of year. Tourists and caravans and people who bought walking boots last Tuesday and think they know the hills. The train suits me better. Always has. You can think on a train. And there are the tunnels. At the first one, a boy pressed
There are objects that accumulate invisible history the way wood accumulates rings. To understand, you have to know what you’re looking at. The knife is a Bowie. Heavy. Always sharp. Forged from layered Damascus steel—the dark, swirling waves of the metal chosen as much for its flexibility as its ability to swallow the light. Important
Tazia’s Bowie Knife Read More »
I’ve been putting this one off. Not because I don’t know what to write. Because I know too much, and case files are supposed to maintain a certain distance, and distance is a thing that becomes increasingly difficult when the subject has your number and uses it. We’ll get to that. Conn O’Cuinn. Celtic Soldier
Conn O’Cuinn: Three hundred years and counting Read More »
I sat in St. Cuthbert’s this morning. Don’t read anything into it. The heating works and it’s quiet before ten. Tazia and I have churches in common that way. There’s a painting on the north wall. Small thing. Oil on board, probably Victorian, probably donated by someone who thought they were being generous. An angel
Tuesday. The farm shop on the edge of the village. I need eggs. That’s the whole of the errand. Late April and the lane is aggressive with green—hawthorn budding hard, cow parsley shouldering up through the verge, the whole hedgerow committed. The air above the fields is layered with it. A soft, breathing green that
What the Colours Know Read More »
