Fox-cub, curious amongst roots, sniffs at air,
Pauses, a child of caution, his foreleg raised.

Despite being five years old, I had never managed to explore the whole of this county
house, set high on its hill. The house was Victorian, built of red brick, and it overlooked a
wide valley, which, on its furthest edge, lapped up against the wall of the South Downs. The
problem was that there were too many rooms. A locked door, at the top of a flight of
narrow wooden stairs, separated off the entire third floor. The space between the top of
this door and the ceiling above was filled with cobwebs, and the stair creaked. I never got
more than halfway up, and even then my heart was pounding like one of the drums carried
by my toy soldiers.
I did get to look once when dad was up there, insulating the loft. Beyond the door
were lots of abadoned rooms where the mice left tiny footprints in the gathering dust and
bat droppings littered the floorboards. My mother never cleaned up there, there wasn’t any
point, with more than enough space for my three brothers, mum, dad and me on the floors
below.
At least a month before dad told me the story of ‘Duckland’ there had been a frenzy
of activity throughout the house. In the echoing confines of the cellar, with its barrel-vaulted
arches, a kitchen was created out of various bits of camping equipment. In dark but brushed
down alcoves, bunk beds appeared. Food in the larder, next to the real kitchen,
disappeared, only to reappear in the cellar. As week followed week, the actions of mum and
dad became increasingly out of the ordinary. It was as if they expected something to

happen, but what it was, was never explained. I heard it spoken about in hushed whispers,
from around corners, but I had no idea what they were talking about.
Then, whatever it was, it passed. The cellar’s contents were returned to their usual
places. Those furtive conversations ceased. Fear, for fear it was, no longer stalked the
corridors. My dad, a consistently kind man, apologised to me and explained the strange
activities with this story:
‘Once upon a time there was a long, thin island in a big puddle of water that was
known as ‘The Pond’. On one side of the pond lived a fierce tribe of Wolves, whilst the other
shore was occupied by a greedy pack of Coyotes. The island itself was home to all sorts of
diverse types of Duck. There were Mallards, just like the ones we see on the pond of the
village green. There were Speckled Marbled Ducks which were cute and fluffy, with long
turned-up beaks. Their special friends were the Blackbellied Whistlers, who liked to roost in
trees, had comical eyes with bright orange beaks, and orange webbed feet. Finally, and
lording it over all the others, were the enormous Canvasback Diving Ducks. Their quacks
were so loud that the other ducks found it difficult to hear themselves think.
The Coyotes wanted to run the island for their own ends and, just maybe, have one
or two Ducks for dinner. Mostly though, they made the Ducks work for them for little more
reward than cheap bird seed. But there were a tremendous amount of these birds, and one
day they all gathered together, led by the greatest Duck of all, Fidel Quack-Quack of the
Canvasback Divers. Then they went ahead and flapped, pecked, and quacked the Coyotes
clear off their island.
Meanwhile, the Wolves, who had never liked the Coyotes, or their methods, called a
tribal meeting. They sat in a great circle, threw back their heads and howled at the full

moon, (a wolf’s way of saying ‘good evening’). They decided on a plan to come to the aid of
the Ducks, who were still being hounded by the Coyotes. Fussing about their fur, the Wolves
built rafts and floated over towards the island. They brought with them some large
catapults, and heavy rocks, with which to attack the Coyotes. This upset the Coyotes
because Duckland was remarkably close to where they lived. There was a good deal of
yapping and barking as the Coyotes dragged their own rocks and catapults to the shore.
Now the Ducks, the Wolves, and the Coyotes became frightened by the threat of a terrible
war. So, the Wolves left Duckland, and paddled back to their tribal homelands. The Coyotes
pretended to be nice to the Ducks by banning all bird seed exports to Duckland.’
*
In January it snowed. The large brick house still dominated the hilltop, though the
snow now transformed it to a fairy-tale home like you find on Christmas cards . It was still
snowing in February, and now there were feet of it. Animal tracks both large and small criss-
crossed its perfection, their owners in search of food. Lawns on the terraces were changed
to eiderdowns. Stone balustrades were softened. Icicles dripped crazy, suck-able, ice-lolly
lengths in the stone grotto with its drinking fountain. The tennis court was a white coverlet.
After breakfast, my brothers and I would emerge from the cold house to the colder
outside. Peter and Roy were dressed in their skiing gear, Chris and I were bundled up like
fat, round sheep with multi-coloured fleeces. My eldest two brothers built rival forts, whilst
Chris and I served as cannon fodder in the ensuing battles. There were two months of such
snow-fights, with freezing hands and blue feet, until at last light came the recurring agony of
chilblains under warm running water.

My brothers, who enjoyed my credulity, told me a story about the fearsome White
Witch who lived in a tumbledown stone hut. This ruin was to be found at the bottom of the
hill, within the tall yew hedge circle, surrounded by pine woods,. They said that she could
turn creatures to stone with a flick of her wand. The pine trees themselves, from the
gardens above, became giants in white gowns. Underneath, in the shadows, they dripped
mist from thin, bone like branches. The Witch, with her freezing breath, was never far away.
* * *

Is exiled at seven, sips language from cold streams-
takes a winding path towards the wood’s dark centre.

At prep school, slipping out after midnight to explore the grounds, and feast on
leftovers from the master’s supper, was considered to be the height of daring. A ladder was
attached to the gable-end wall of the country house, which formed the main body of the
school. Behind this wall was our first-floor dormitory with its french-windows that opened
onto a cast-iron balcony with a hinged grill in its base. This lifted up to allow access to the
ladder below. Down this ladder, my friends Chris and Michael and I would descend, with
whatever goodies we had managed to collect. Tonight was special, we had achieved a
legendary prank by successfully raiding the school’s sweet cupboard. Sweets were the hard
currency of prep school life. They could be traded for almost anything, they were worth
their weight in gold doubloons, food for both pirates and their parrots’.
Every lunchtime each boy was allowed to choose two sweets from an enormous jar.
On Sundays, as a special treat, the boys could choose three. All the sweets were kept in the
locked sweet cupboard which was actually a small room in a corner of the dining hall. The
headmaster kept the key to this room inside an ancient roll-top desk in his office. But there
was rumoured to be a second way in. The Sweets Monitor, whose job it was to fetch and
carry sweets from table to table after lunch, had let slip that he had noticed an opening into
the cupboard. True, this possible access was small, and half hidden beneath the bottom
shelf, but it might be large enough for a ten-year-old boy to squeeze through.

Timing was crucial. The masters had their own common room, where the unmarried
took their evening meal. This room lay behind a door at the end of Long Passage, which,
with its red and black quarry tile floor, ran the length of the school. The kitchens were a few
yards further up this corridor, accessed by another door opposite a flight of narrow stairs.
From the top of these stairs, Chris and I watched the comings and goings of the staff and
kept note of the times. The masters had their dinner between seven and eight o'clock, after
which they dispersed, often to the local pub. So, by 9:00 pm, the kitchen, the Long Passage
and the master’s common room would usually be empty of authority. The dark stained,
panel doors would be shut. Quiet would reign. Chris and I had worked out that the secret
way into the sweet cupboard should be accessible via the cellar. The cellar door was at the
end of Long Passage, at right angles to the entrance of the masters common room. Behind it
a flight of steps led down into darkness.
Torches are a favourite tool of both explorers and small boys, so equipped with ours,
Chris and I passed through the cellar door, one Friday night, at 9:00 pm. We'd worked out
that Fridays were the best day to make our attempt, because the pub beckoned the masters
earlier, and with greater effect.
But the cellars were reputed to be haunted!!
The school was situated on a lane, known as ‘Snows Ride’. It was rumoured that
Dick Turpin, the highwayman, had shot Captain Snow in the cellars, when the school had
been an Inn. Though in reality it was probably the Headmaster who had spread this story, as
an additional disincentive to the curiosity of youth.
The floor of the cellar was littered with the skeletons of metal sprung bedsteads, and
their shadows leapt across the old slate slabs in the narrow beams of torchlight. The

shadows looked skeletal and frightening. Horsehair mattresses were piled in the corner,
farthest from the steps and closest to our guessed location of the sweet cupboard’s secret
entrance.
‘Look, up there,’ said Chris. ‘See where the ceiling is lower, that must be the
underside of the sweet cupboard’
Sure enough, in the light from our torches the underside of the room above became
visible, including the bottoms of the timbers that held up the floor above. Then, the beam
from my torch exposed a hole in the lower part of the sweet cupboard wall, reachable off
the pile of mattresses.
‘I’ll go up,’ Chris said. ‘I like a bit of climbing.’
By the time Chris had reached the top of the pile of filthy old matrasses he had
sneezed half a dozen times. A cloud of dust surrounded him; the tiny particles were clearly
visible in the torchlight. The cloud smelt of age and neglect.
‘The entrance is covered in cobwebs and there's loads of old plaster and insects
caught up in the spider’s traps. Yech.’ Chris said. ‘Can you see a stick or anything to clean
away these webs.,
‘Yes, there's something here.’ I said.
A piece of lathe, freed from its plaster coating, appeared to float into the beam from
Christopher's torch. He grabbed it, there was the sound of a stick rattling and scrapping in
the mouth of the torch-lit hole. I thought about things that might make such a noise in a
haunted cellar and glanced nervously into the darkness.
‘That’s lots better,’ said a disembodied Chris. ‘ I'm going in’

The dark became darker still. Chris’s light was directed into the hole, then obscured
by his body crawling in behind it. Muffled exclamations followed, jar lids being unscrewed,
scrabbling’s, lids being re-screwed. Finally, after what seemed a long forever to me, stood in
a haunted cellar reputed to be the scene of bloody and murderous deeds, Chris re-emerged.
His small rucksack bulged.
‘Here, catch’ said Chris.
I caught a boiled sweet in my cupped hands, an orange slice, heaven sent. Ghosts
were soon forgotten. Then came the bag, followed by Chris, seriously dusty.
‘Right, let's get out of here.’ I said, brushing him down, and spluttering.
*
Late Saturday afternoon, after sports, Michael, Chris, and I sat around my desk. Last
year’s tune by the Beatles, ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’ played quietly from a tranny
radio across our fourth-form room. After returning from our exploits the night before, Chris
and I had woken Mike, and dragged him, complaining briefly, out of bed. We’d slipped
through the french-windows out onto the balcony, lifted the hatch, and climbed down the
ladder. We then spent two hours wandering the school ground’s, lit by the three-quarters
moon, sucking and chewing, on our liberated treasures.
Back in the form room, I lifted my desk-top lid. The desk’s insides glistened and
glimmered with sweets in their wrappers. We three boys sat transfixed by what we saw,
when, from above our heads came a loud, basso rumble:
‘GOTCHA.’ in the unmistakable tones of Monsieur Merde, the French Master.
* * *

A psychedelic prankster, a foxy lady lover,
I consumed sorrows; I took powdered joy.

There was loud, insistent banging coming from the front door of the house I shared
with my new friends in Oxford. This house was the second to last in a row of tired Victorian
terrace dwellings that formed a side street off the Abingdon road. It was late spring, and the
cherry tree in the overgrown garden was still in blossom. It was nearing midday. I was
awake and vertical, so I answered the heavy and insistent knocking. An old school friend,
Simon, stood outside, glazed, goofy and obviously excited. I opened the door wider to let
him in, halfway through he paused, pulled up his trouser leg and pointed down.
‘What's occurring.’, I asked, then looked to where he pointed.
A packet of orange and black pills was taped to the back of his calf.
‘Downers, strong ones.’ Si said.
Oh shit, here we go again,’ I thought.
It has to be said, right now, that Si was a madman. Some years after this he was run
over and killed by a bus in northern India. I'd had a letter from him, just two weeks before
hearing of his death, from his sister. His letter described the intense beauty of sand dunes in
a moonlit desert, after taking a tab of LSD. They’d probably have been beautiful without the
drug, but substances added mythos to the user, at least in our circles. I read his sister’s

letter telling me of his death as I stood on the Thames embankment, looking out across the
river to Battersea Park. In the park stood a statue of a rider on horseback. Who, I don't
know? I was mashed, I pulled out my notebook and wrote some lines:
White, as a fragment of the clouds, he flies,
innocent as the mirror of himself, he glides,
swift as a dove into the mouth of love, he flies.
We linger by the river of his ruined dreams.

Anyway, there he was, his brown curly hair, his wiry, skinny frame, all five foot ten
inches of bobbing and weaving intensity. I’d known him from the gym at school. I was part
of the gymnastics team; he was a lonesome boxer. He was pretty good, neat on his feet
with a rapid powerhouse of a southpaw . Now we were both out-casts. He, without a degree
in something he was no longer interested in, I an ex-Reading University drop out. I’d made it
for just one term and five weeks. I’d left, after telling my hall tutor that I'd been to places he
had never even dreamt of. How did I know? He might have been a closet follower of
Timothy Leary.
Si rushed in with some incoherent story of how he'd come across the pills in Exeter,
thought of me, and immediately hitched all the way, and here he was, after a night under
the stars on the slopes of Glastonbury Tor. A little later, I made the same pilgrimage with
another friend called Paul, who had walked across America, from west to east. He explained
this as a necessary journey for his soul. Camped out under a hedge, Paul told me that if you
listen long, and hard enough, you can hear the hooves of horses thundering round and

round a cavern inside the hill. Something about King Arthur's Knights? That evening our
blow was particularly good.
In ten minutes, it was all decided. I’d just finished a fortnight's work for Manpower.
I'd been cleaning out pigswill bins in the deepest, saddest cellar room in the Randolf Hotel,
Oxford. This room was located at the bottom of a steep flight of steps that ran down from
the cellars of the hotel. It had one pendant lightbulb, was tiled with rectangular white tiles
on all four walls, and the floor, which sloped towards a small black hole, an open drain at
the room’s centre. There was also an industrial hose pipe of faded red. The place seemed
possessed, and an air of torture, or murder, hung above that centred void of darkness in the
floor. If you were rich, or an aristocrat, visiting your offspring at Oxford University, then this
hotel is where you would have stayed in 1977.
Because I’d just been paid, my pockets were relatively full of money, and Si had the
stimulus. We each popped a pill, caught the bus out of town to the main M40 roundabout at
Headington and thumbed a lift, straight to central London. Our driver was a poor,
unfortunate father of similarly insane children as ourselves. I think he was a surgeon, but it
was long ago. By the time we’d hit the traffic lights at Earls Court he was ready to cut us out
of his life for good. Our slurred voices had slewed him to a stop. Si immediately tumbled out
of the car, whilst I fumbled with door locks.
‘Your friend appears to have fallen asleep in the road at the back of the car.’ said our
surgeon, drily.
‘Thanks,’ I said, looking round to check on Si. ‘And thanks for the lift. I hope your son
rings you soon.’ I said.

I extricated myself with difficulty and rescued Simon, who had indeed fallen asleep in the
busy road. Turned out he'd taken two pills to my one.
We wobbled our way to Parsons green, where Simon’s mother lived in a large and
comfortable Victorian house. She was mostly out and about, as both her children were
supposedly grown-up. The rest of the day and evening passed in a blurred, then double
vision haze similar to that brought on by the serious consumption of alchahol. My only
definite memory was a late-night walk round the triangle of Parsons green. Here, every car I
passed was occupied by two policemen on the front seats. Hallucinations are a further
symptom of a downer binge. Absolute paranoia rules absolutely.
During the afternoon of the next day, I caught the bus back to Oxford from Victoria
bus station. Two days after that, feeling low and dispirited, I was walking with my friend
Paul through the beechwoods that cover the escarpment of the Chiltern hills. We sat in a
glade looking out over the Oxford plain not far from the location of the windmill featured in
the film Chitty-Chitty Bang -Bang. I felt strange. The last thing I remember saying was:
‘Look at that butterfly Paul, the one with the seven-foot wingspan.’
I woke in High Wycombe hospital. It was my birthday. I was twenty-one and lucky. I’d had
Petit Mal, a minor epileptic fit, brought on by barbiturate withdrawal. But, as I reflected
afterwards, how else does one get to see a seven-foot butterfly winging and weaving its way
through the tall and beautiful trunks of a Beech-wood.
* * *

I donned my leathers, rode the road to Wales,
I searched, seeking poems amongst mountains,

My houseboat, Doric 2, was a converted trans-Atlantic liners lifeboat. I looked up the Doric
online, she was built in 1924 at Harland’s and Wolf in Northern Ireland for the White Star
line, which later became White Star Cunard. Doric is a name to resurrect the splendours of
the Acropolis at Athens. A name to suggest classicism, culture, and the would-be nobility of
all who sailed in her. Sometime later, in Wales, I was to meet the Carpenter who had
converted her. His name was Steven and he would create the elegant Victorian style shop
front for a project that I and my partners were working on in Narberth. This shop would be
called the Golden Sheaf, and is still in business, famous around Pembrokeshire and amongst
our tourists.
Doric 2 was, perhaps, less of an achievement than the shop front. To me she was a
thing of beauty, with some lovely carpentry internally, everything having been built by hand
and designed to fit to the curves of the boat. However, a closer inspection of the bilges
revealed water lapping at a level controlled by an automatic pump, and the rusting hulk of
diesel engine ruined by age. There was also some degree of softness in the teak planking.
Yet she was of massive construction considering her relatively small size. She had been
designed to survive a 50-foot plummet from her davits to the ship’s waterline, in the event
of the crew having make an emergency launch. The timber that formed her keel was a
twelve by three-inch baulk of oak. This was topped off with a length of half-inch sprung steel
that was three inches wide. From the stern post to the top of the stem post, this single piece
of metal reinforced all the joints in the timber. Originally, she was a lifeboat to be rowed,

and her engine would have been fitted sometime after 1935, when ‘The Doric’ was
scrapped.
She had a tiny galley, an even tinier bathroom with chemical toilet and gas-powered
shower. There was a double berth built into the bow of the vessel, which was accessed
through two louvre doors in a decorative bulkhead. The bunk was raised, by about three
foot, the cabin being about six foot two inches high. Because of this and the added foam
mattress there was only a small claustrophobic gap to accommodate the sleeping
occupants. In the depths of winter, a sheet of ice would form above the sleepers’ heads , on
the underside of the deck. This ice was made from moisture in the sleepers’ breath. On cold
but sunny mornings any chance of a lie-in was interrupted by meltwaters dripping on heads.
I lived onboard Doric for three years, two of them with my fiancé. In the first year,
Doric 2 served a definite purpose, a home near London, but far enough to cleanse ourselves
of a sickness nurtured and developed during my four and a half years of insurance broking.
Boredom and a will to nothingness had crept in, and they nearly overcame us. On the boat
we recovered and grew, a voyage towards a recognition of the value of practicality over
endless dreaming. In the second year I worked in Bushey and Hampton Court parks as a
seasonal gardener. I thought about Wisley Gardens and the RHS college, but I didn't apply. I
spent time in the library, researched and started a fantasy novel. The confines of the
houseboat proved too much, and I lost that love which I should have tried harder to save.
During my third year on Doric, I returned to my father’s family root’s and worked on the
river. We’d been boatmen and lightermen for centuries, before enjoying a hundred and
twenty years of comparative wealth by reinventing ourselves as Master Stevedores.

During the winter rains I learnt the meaning of T.S Eliot’s words from ‘The Four
Quartets’:
‘the river is a strong brown god,’
I had to abandon the ‘Doric’ twice in the face of rapidly rising river levels. After a
fortnight of rain, the Thames was moving fast in a single wide sheet. It backed up against the
stone piers of Kingston Bridge, where its flood waters became channelled and ferocious in
their unstoppable force. Before I headed for dry land, extra mooring lines had to be secured,
allowing the boat to rise and fall. Great care had to be taken not to allow these lines to
become snagged on the mooring posts; if they did they could cause the vessel to capsize.
Spring followed. I was woken each morning by loud strings of staccato taps, ducks
feeding on weeds along the waterline. The small rockery I had planted the year before had
been washed away, so I planted another. I thought about ancient civilizations who relied on
seasonal flooding to sustain their agricultural way of life, the inhabitants of the Nile valley,
Mesopotamia, and the Amazon basin. Humanity in harmony with its surroundings, blending
with, rather than controlling, their environments. The flowers I planted cheered up the
concrete path at the end of my gangplank. All the other boat owners had to walk past, their
moorings being beyond my plank. They seemed pleased, and it made up a little for my
occupation of the communal electric’s shed with my motorbikes. The preceding winter I’d
spent weeks dismantling and rebuilding my CB360 Honda's engine. I was obsessive,
sometimes working till 2:00 AM, my hands freezing, but protected by a thick coat of grease
and oil.
In the late summer and early autumn months I began to make plans to move to
Wales. I’d enjoyed our life on the river, but since the end of our relationship, I seemed to be

travelling nowhere fast. Old habits were beginning to reassert themselves, so I decided to
make use of Norman Tebbit’s legendary slogan and ‘get on my bike’. By now I was the proud
owner of a 440 custom Kawasaki. My brother Roy and his wife had been living outside
Narberth in West Wales for the past ten years. I took a long weekend off from work and
rode at speed to visit them. By the end of the weekend, I’d put an offer on a house which
was immediately accepted, so I hired a van, which my brother agreed to drive to Kingston
and back. Once in Kingston, we piled my possessions into the van. I arranged for someone to
look after the boat, and left London forever.

*

Instead , I found trowels. I bent my back, I laboured,
dug and built, I found meaning in my fox’s lair.

I was pleased with myself; I'd received the highest ever mark in the multiple-choice
paper set by Pembrokeshire college. City and Guilds, Level 2, Brickwork, done and dusted.
My trowel felt lighter in my hand, my level had turned out to be a faithful friend, its bubbles
moved by their special relationship with molten iron at the earth’s core. Whilst plumbing
blockwork I'd been heard to say:
‘See here boys, some six and a half thousand kilometres down, is the absolute centre
of the earth.’
Usually, this would be met with blank stares, or, if I was lucky, shouts of,
’ no way, mate, not with that level, and certainly not with your blockwork.’
I was body-hunted as a labourer but, after I’d received my qualification, was soon
asked to join in a partnership of four. I was now, apparently, a bona-fide a tradesman. I was
given my first medium sized job to manage. A double fronted shop on Narberth High Street,
opposite the Old Town hall. The work consisted of a partial ‘gut’- stripping off all the old
lime plaster on the internal and external faces of the stone walls. We also had to strengthen,
but leave in situ, four massive timber lintels, heavily infested with dry rot. These timbers
supported the wall above the two bay-windows, and above the main entrance door set
between them.

But let me show you the process of how we reconstructed that front wall, in an easy
to follow and ordered manner. I started with a descent into the cellar, to be greeted by the
smell of a renovation build: failed plasters, damp, and mould. Decayed timbers, every type
of rot blended with the dust of cracked stone and damaged mortar joints. At the base of all
that weight of wall with its centuries of creeping entropy, there was and is an ever-present
sense of time and its clockwork machinations. Narberth is old, mentioned in the
‘Mabynigion’. It is surrounded by Iron Age forts on the tops of hills, with ancient roadways
that criss-cross the woods to the south of the town, linking the forts, and some running
southwest to the Cleddau estuary. From roads to water roads, and out to the coastal trade
routes. Here lie memories of the retreat of the Romano-celts from the blades of the Angles
and Saxons.
To begin this process, I made up a shutter and poured a strong mix of aggregates
and cement, 150mm thick, into it. Liquid rock that sets in its frame. There were four of these
foundation pads in the basement, one either side of the two bays,. On them I build block-
on-flat piers, from the top of the slab to the underside of the ground floor Bay windows.
Next layer: 25mm of steel plate, 300mm by 600mm, levelled on a 1 to 1 cement and sand
screed on top of those block peers. Next day, I drilled and fixed four bolts through the plate
and deep into the blocks. Our supervisor, Steve, now takes the lead,
‘Miles, bring me over that steel column, yes the 170mm circular one, there should be
four altogether.’ Steve said.
The end of the tube was cut square, so that it stood vertical to the horizontal plate
when we positioned it. Steve tag-welded them together, using small slips of steel to
maintain the plumbness of the column. When all was correct, Steve completed the weld. I

looked away into the shadows to avoid the glare of the arc welder and the risk of a burn to
the back of an eyeball.
Steve was short, stocky, and strong. His hair, curly and grey, stuck out at varied and
crazy angles from under his baseball cap. He had blue grey eyes. He’d spent time in America,
was possessed of charisma and was always visible in his checked shirt. He held an Open
University degree in sociology, but was practical, unlike me. Steve was a welder by trade,
though he disliked it, preferring carpentry. He hated wet trades like plastering. He was
excellent with a tape measure, but most of all he was good at organising men, and he often
inspired them to go beyond their self-belief.’
‘Miles, fetch me the other 300mm by 600mm plate, we’ll attach it to the top of the
column. The C-section steels and the wooden beams will sit on this plate, and the other
three, once we’ve finished them.’ said Steve.
I did as he asked, and jabbered away about this and that: houseboats, and working in
Insurance in the City. Steve mentioned that he went to sea when he was seventeen.
‘ I signed up as an ordinary crewman on a rust ridden freighter bound for South
Africa. I washed a lot of decks and sanded large patches of knackered paintwork on a daily
basis, painting it up again afterwards,’ he said, as he removed his welder’s mask. ‘We were
allowed to go ashore on a 24-hour pass. I strayed into areas we were warned against, but I’d
heard the best bars were there. I helped this black guy who was having a hard time from
another sailor, but a passing white police officer threatened to shoot both of us if I didn't
make tracks fast. I left. Apart from that, the wine was good, and cheap.’
I was impressed, and never spoke of insurance again.

*

Lightning crackles in the darkness, the four columns are erected and welded, their
header plates secured. The C section steals were cut to length, an oxy-acetylene torch,
ensured the cutter’s flame fell rapidly through the thick metal. They were now ready to fit
either side of the existing wood lintels. I applied copious amounts of fungicidal poison to the
rotten wood. Scaffold towers were raised, and more men drafted in. Steve hustled them
into teams, for a rapid two hours of lifting.
Then the tide ebbed, and the place emptied. I'm left alone to drill twenty-six holes
through the C section steels, and the twenty-four inches of timber between them. I hired a
heavy, magnetised drill for the holes through the steel, with a 28 mm bit. The drill hung on a
chain, looped over the first-floor joists above, just in-case the electric failed, and magnetism
was lost, causing the drill to plummet. I lined up the holes in the steel beams with difficulty,
as I only had a large builders square and a measuring tape. To drill the wood required our
heavy-duty drill. It had a brutal clutch that was notoriously unreliable, and sometimes,
instead of the drill engaging the clutch, the body of the drill span, and smashed into the side
of my head. Oh joy. It took four eight-hour days of relentless effort for me to complete the
task. When it was done the front wall was fully supported, and thirty years on it has no
visible cracks in the render we renewed.

* * *

But pain crept in, it often made me want to retch-
I quit, and now I sit, writing, though never enough.

Mid-November, and the winds bend the bleached grassers on the Preseli hills. They
whispered, then howled, and held conversations amidst the stones at Pentre Ifan. They ran
wild amongst the outcrops of Rhyolite and other igneous rocks that project from the tops of
the hills. I have heard the ghosts argue back, against this piercing wind,
‘We are here, we are always here.’ they said.
Sometimes the winds ceased, and the mists rose, or the fogs descended. Other days
the sun sparked the frost to a firework of morning. Most often though, it was mud, and a
puddled, pitted ground-scape that greeted me, the builder who laboured there, under an
escalator sky. Here cloud followed cloud, all saturated with every possible type of rain.
I broke the existing reinforced concrete cover of the well with my sledge and
jackhammer. I watched as pieces, which I could neither deflect nor divert, tumbled through
the surface tension of the water below. These lumps elicited plops of sound that echoed
from the mouth of that hole in the field. The water level was two foot down from the top of
where the cover used to be. All that was left of this lid were two, wrist thick rods of iron,
alien pieces of farm machinery, each a tusk from a Narwal, that spanned the mouth of the
well. Between these the sky, with its cumulonimbus clouds, slid across the water’s face.
My mate Dave used his digger to push and pull the bulk of my builder’s waste
collection, with its torn webs of rust coloured mesh, into a tidy pile. I was grateful, though
the mud was worse. The next day he saw me struggle with a lightweight cement mixer.

Without apparent effort, he hoisted it over one shoulder, and carried it 60 metres up the
hill, to set it down beside the pile of face-stone. Dave is gentle. Six foot six inches of
bodybuilder, he was once an accountant, till his sums were spoilt by the addition of cider, so
instead he turned his capable hands to landscape gardening. We'd been gym buddies for
thirty years, during which his beanpole body had expanded to become more like the trunk
of an oak.
Everything about this well, and its well-head that I was enclosing, disturbed me. Why
was it so full, so close to the hill’s top? What stopped the water from leaking out, 20 metres
away from the hole, where the ground was below the bottom of the well? I had measured
the water at 13 feet. How far down had the shaft originally been sunk, was pure
guesswork? To look down into it filled me with unexplained dread. The inability to clamber
out safely frightened me, and I built the whole structure with my ladder permanently rooted
on the well’s bottom, as a safety precaution. It was a quiet spot, and no one was likely to
come to my rescue should I fall in. The water’s face with its steady flow of sky was both
hypnotic and alluring. It felt like a meeting point between two worlds. If I were to enter that
other world, what strange being might be spawned to take my place here.
Once, the moon visited during the day. I’d shuttered a new reinforced base, 2.0m by
2.0m square, with a large, central hole for access to the well. This raft foundation was
needed to hold the combined weight of both the blocks and the stone that would make up
the surround of the ‘wishing well’. This look was at the client’s request. The effect of the
shutter was to isolate the reflection of the sky in the well from the browns and greens of the
muddy field around it. Now the approach was close to a spiritual journey. When I peered
down into it and saw the moon’s face next to my own, I was gripped, for the briefest of

moments, by the desire to slip beneath that reflection. But I’ve learnt that I’m a maker by
nature, I need to build. I require creation, not immersion.
Pain was my biggest obstacle to progress. My right shoulder joint had become an
arthritic wasteland. My right arm spent its time just hanging about. Fortunately, I'm left-
handed, so work was still possible. Humans are amazingly creative in their ability to adapt to
necessity. I used my plaster’s hawk supported by a sling if I needed to render or skim, and
besides, this was to be my last job before an operation to renew the joint. Sophisticated
brutality might be a good expression to describe the joint replacement process in the as yet
non-existent ‘Haynes Manual of Body Mechanics’:
‘3:2 Take the patient’s humorous, in a firm grip and use a hard point, small tooth saw
to remove the end of the bone (refer to picture 3:2a). Carefully dispose of waste. Pin and
glue the correct jointing piece to the cut end of the bone, where the marrow now seeps out.
Use a small, hardened steel chisel and a hammer to quarry out nodules of affected bone
from the joint’s face. Leave it smooth. Insert bone into scapular and sew the cut flesh back
together.’
The build progressed, a circle of nine-inch blocks was laid on end, each block’s face
measured back from a vertical length of steel bar, positioned at the dead centre of the well,
and secured by scraps of timber rescued from pallets. These blocks surrounded the three-
foot hole above the water’s face. Galvanised wire ties hedge-hogged the external face of the
block tube. These ties ensured that the stonework would remain in place, long after the
build was complete. To make the stonework circle as perfect as possible, I used a trammel,
a piece of wood, marked to measure the distance back to the vertical metal bar from the
face of the stonework.

All the while the sky slips by, inside and over the well. My arm hung limp. The
surgeon’s knife beckoned from the operating theatre. I threw a coin in the hole. My
shoulder throbbed, and I let my arm dangle down the stone tube I was forming. It felt
protected. I imagined my hand’s descent through geological ages, with the arm elongating.
Past the dugout layers of rab, into the stone of the Ordovician plains, where the glaciers had
failed to reach. The collar of stone I had built welded itself to me like ligaments round the
shoulder. The pain would be taken in December, the water in the well would cure me. This I
had wished when I threw in my money.

* * *

Still fox-curious, I glance up the pathway-
Which winds towards the centre of the wood.

At least the wish came true. But as one pain went, another arose to take its place.
Thank the gods for paracetamol, and a smattering of codeine. Six months after, I had
finished that well on its Welsh mountainside, and I had finished with surgery. I was back at
the building, much to my wife’s disgust. She had decided to return to art school to gain the
fine arts degree she had previously abandoned. I was still enamoured of my trade,
determined to have one more go, an attic conversion. My client was a playwright, a fact that
messed with my head. I wrote poetry, I performed it, I attended a stanza group, but was, as
far as I could see, simply a builder. Sometimes I could kid myself, that I built concrete poems
with concrete blocks. They were similar to words that could be laid into sentences, then
their pages formed into narratives. Stacks of blocks could be turned into walls, grown into
houses, and filled with the stories of our lives. But then the pain returned, and my illusions
were shattered. The location of the pain was new, but it had the same cruel effect as
before, it broke my love of physical work. Within a fortnight of starting the new job, I
applied to Aberystwyth as an undergraduate on their Creative Writing course.
The interview was an experience in itself. It is one thing to be more than three times
as old as the other students, but to be older than one’s lecturers? Just to step out of the lift
into the bright light of the English and Creative Writing departments foyer was the biggest
single step I'd taken since leaving London. I was sweating, suffering from intruders

syndrome and extreme self-consciousness. After the interview, I met up with Carole, my
wife, in the Arts Centre café. We had something to eat and our respective coffee and tea.
We looked out at the panoramic view of Cardigan Bay, away over the trees and town. It was
then I realised that this continuation of my quest to write was a good idea.. I’d decided to
take the fork in the path that leads towards the centre of the wood.