Monday 1 August 2011

Since You've Been Gone

We have moved. Me and the Snout, a small brother and sundry cats have upped sticks and run to the hills. Now we live on a road so steep it has a banister, in a village mentioned in the Domesday Book, and if I crane my neck from my bedroom window I can see Fancy Engine pirouetting on top of the mast at Emley Moor, my favourite thing in the whole wide world.

I am at home up here, where the hills roll like breaching beasts and the W.I. hosts jam sales in the churchyard. The local butcher wears a shirt and tie and sings 'I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles' as he's sharpening his knives. Everywhere is up a ginnel. This is my gods' own country and it's in me like the inside of my mouth.

So now I'm rendering bones in my subterranean kitchen and making cunning plans. The old house was killing me - the damp and the detritus, the woodchip and the cold, the tiny handprints in the secret cellar and the children calling carrion outside. Here I can hatch myself again, spring back fully-formed from between my toes. Now I can get the sack back in my posset.

3 comments: