As I write, nestled in against the shouldering spruce, at the bottom of the hill, the riot of untrimmed greenery peeping over the sill from my study window. The steel grey Northwest sky rolling unbrokenly overhead.
What do I want to write about.
I, and my partner, ahve 12 acres of Northwest Ireland at our liberal disposal. It's rugged, hilly land, wet through and claggy and it grips you to it as you clamber. The rushes leave dark welts on your jeans. The woods rustle like a green ocean, like a shifting and verdant sea shuffling onto sand. The spaces between the tree trunks have the mossy stillness of green water, and I think a little more slowly as if my thoughts have to wade through the tidal trees to shore.
And, as with all thoughts, some of them arrive wearing wellingtons.
I want to write about the clear steel ring of an axe head on wood sounding out on the rim of the echoing valley like a prayer bowl. The rich dark rough sound of a spade biting into clay. About the solid unpoetry of dung and faecal decoposition. About where I live writing istelf in my body, in the shape of my arms and the unexpected breadths, about the shape of the sound tools make in a smothering meadow, and the thicktall summerwarm acres of untended grass.
There will probably be a lot of talk about fencing.
