A METAPHYSICAL SANDWICH

As it was a special day, an anniversary, I put my red gilet over my scarlet pullover and sauntered out into the sunshine for my daily ten minute circumnavigation of the neighbourhood.  It's my usual prelude to starting work.  Immediately, an old man in a white sun hat hailed me.  I see this man frequently, usually with a long train of Yorkshire terrier behind him.  He pointed to the sun.

To be fair it was visible, which has not been the case for quite a time.  I like to think that as the day was special it had decided to put in an appearance, as a young lad might saunter into the back of a catering tent in the hope of picking up a cream bun.  It sat there smiling against the blue autumnal sky.

"Is this summer?" my man asked to no-one in particular.  The Yorkie having no answer proceeded to water a pile of fallen leaves on the pavement. The fallen leaves suggested a negative answer. I felt I should hedge my bets. "You never know," I said.

It wasn't exactly a witty discourse.  We both must think of something more original to say.  But it's not always easy at that time of the morning when I would be quite content not to speak to anyone. Some enterprising soul could perhaps make a name by producing a phrase book which gave people a set of handy opening gambits and suitable responses. 

I was thinking of this when later this fine day I was sitting on the bench at the top of the Tump looking out over the flat land that stretches to the sea, beyond which rise the hills of Exmoor.  Above these in turn a line of white clouds floated.

One of those days when you could see everything, when the light is crystal clear - Porlock, Minehead - hard to believe they are further away from me than Calais is from Dover.

The Tump is a copse, I suppose. Beech trees this side, sycamores and chestnuts the other. None very old - a hundred years perhaps at the most.  The leaves are already turning.  As I come up here almost every other day I ask myself when did this happen?  But then autumn comes upon you sneakily, don't you find? I mean as someone said once: one week you are pottering in the garden until nine o'clock and the next it's dark at seven.  One week the leaves are pristine and green, the next they are shrivelled and brown and being shredded in the breeze.

Who planted these trees and why? My guess is there have always been trees here for thousands and thousands of years. A sacred place, a mystical place a junction of Neolithic tracks.  A place to get ones bearing and to eat ones sandwiches - which presumably the Neolithic people ate, too.  Bread and autumn jam and perhaps even butter too.  Not much changes in the basic culinary world. 

As I sit on the bench, still in my scarlet gilet, I eat my own metaphorical sandwich which turns out to be not so much metaphorical as metaphysical.  I am struck with the thought that there seems to be a lot more going on in my mind that is observed by my consciousness and, what's more, the window provided by this consciousness seems to be getting smaller all the time.

It's been a troubling time lately: there's been a death in the family and a lot of stress.  I can consciously feel this stress; I know it is there. If my consciousness were wider I might indeed see it.  Or so I think.

Years ago I could listen to the radio and read the newspaper, but now I can only do one or the other - my consciousness isn't wide enough to embrace both.  And then there's the supernatural - always strong in a place like this, which my consciousness, limited as it is,  can't grasp at all. Yet I can sense this is exactly the sort of place to set pendulums swinging; where you might find a ghost of some fine member of the fairy folk flitting in and out of the beech trees in the gloaming.  Where a rainbow might end and where you might bury your own crock of gold.

There is much we don't see - or some of us don't see.  The mayor told me she once saw a whole group of men dressed in eighteenth century clothes crossing the road, not so far away.  She stopped the car for them to cross, believing them to be actors out for a night's pantomime.  But then they just vanished.  Boom!  There are more things in heaven and earth than are told of in your philosophy, Horatio.

The picture shows the north (inland) side of the Tump.  You'd need to look to your right from where the photographer is taking the picture to see the sea.  He seems more interested in the communications masts.  But you can see also the old Neolithic trackway which continues in a straight line almost to Port Talbot in one direction and Llantrithyd in the other.  I fear the communications masts with their high energy radiations would drive away any passing fairy folk.