An intense few weeks lie ahead of marking, reading manuscripts, a doctoral thesis, reviewing another philosophy programme, then committee meetings, examiners' meetings before I am free to head back north and do some of my own work.
I had a luminous time in North Staffordshire over the Bank Holiday, trees, beech trees, beech trees with young translucent leaves, sunlight on the the eerie, on the lurid green of lichen on fallen tree trunks, trees, what shall I do without trees, trees, great trees soaring, filtering the beams of light onto the primeval faery floor of the Valley and memory, running, racing fleet-footed, young, down the Gorge and along the valley path and splashing through the rapid stream, in May-time, in freezing February snow, in blizzards of rain and sleet, and then now, the formality of the Reunion Mass, sung by old men who moved uncertainly like ancient druids of a lost religion painfully across the sanctuary to read a text or recite a prayer or receive the benediction of the thurifer's incense in the Pugin chapel that is the sole remains ....
The sea will compensate for the absence of trees, the trees will be there, though, palpable in their absence.
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