ECHO 14/4/06 - Keswick to London

The expression ‘globe trotter’ in my mind when I wake - pleasing that it is there - A question then: Why does the future need to be planned? After all, here the hills beg one to be without a plan; to exist full of spontaneous drives and to then meander - it’s hard not to seek that out up here - it is the defining spirit of place -

The mingled smells of breakfast; the market snapped by bleak weather -

First however the day disintegrates before the force of reprimand - logically it should be page one of a novel, but sadly it is hard reality for a while, boneshakingly real - thankfully it passes -

Then watching Ospreys over Bassenthwaite Lake - tantalising glimpses of the male bird in a high fir close to the nest; excitement palpable among the birders (young and old) -

countless rivers and tributaries and upland streams running down into, then along, the valley floors - blissful to follow them with the eye from a distance; the sun descending here, the shadows lengthening over the fells - for me it will be difficult to be away from them (and from Pol) for the next two weeks (one train window here will become one train window in Italy) - though the verdancy and landscape will be similar - the pale wood smoke interchangeable -

the sea shatters this - the sun refracting off the surface of an estuary, some bright body of water, Lancaster close by -

D.H. Lawrence and Schubert on Warrington Bank Quay station platform April 2006 - the industrial light; the stroking of hair between a young couple sat for hours in the waiting room; the sordid chromium chimneys; a huge billboard on a gutted warehouse: ‘In Debt? We can write it off.’ Beyond, troops of kids waiting by the go-karting area watch an empty track; a slag heap, marshland - the edges, wastelands, borders; the sun descending beyond the power station; the pointless millennium bridge arching over the city (money well spent?). D.H. and Schubert walk arm in arm into this and ready themselves for the onslaught - they meet a man with the face of the lead actor from Vittorio de Sica’s film The Bicycle Thieves; he is attempting to smile through the back of his head - three Asian boys are watching Al-Jazeera broadcasts they have downloaded onto a laptop - laughing and playing at being subversives - snippets of the insurgency in Iraq, quotes and clips of Osama re-edited to a backing track of hard hip-hop beats - D.H. and Schubert make no judgement (how could they?), they just report and take note of what they see - a middle-aged man calls out ‘Gouranga’ from a bridge over the ring road - D.H. speaks: ‘oh happy land so strong diverted; oh sweet spring will you take us up once more unto the lark or will you play us all for fools?’