A fragment

Saturday 8.24am

A single pair of head lights moves silently towards me through the pools of gathering darkness below. I lean back against the car bonnet and sip beer from a bottle, watching. From my vantage point on the side of this hill the horizon is a bright line ahead, dark ragged clouds cross the sky above and the colour is draining out of the land below. Dusk is just beginning.

The wind buffets me insistently, bringing the clouds closer as a fresh, clean dampness that I can feel on my face and hands. And see too in the droplets forming on my jumper. I shiver contentedly. All around is the quiet tearing sound of the sheep eating, always eating, and on the wind, a distant bird cry.

I feel . . . grey. Like the darkening land that I, even in my melancholy isolation am part of. And content as well. This is how it is. Other people live life whilst I stand on a lonely hillside drinking beer and watch the dusk settle in.

A fragment of a memory, more a feeling really. It was brought on by a single scene of a solitary whale leaping in a deserted marineland pool, in of all things, a car advert.