The Alchemy Press Book of Ancient Wonders by Peter

Author:Peter
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Publisher: The Alchemy Press
Published: 2013-02-03T05:00:00+00:00

Ringfenced by Lynn M Cochrane

SO I PHOTOGRAPHED Sam that sunny afternoon, leaning against the gatepost at the entrance to the field, his hair blowing in the wind, eyes sparkling, laughter written in every crease of his face. Later, and there was a later, I would look at that image and not know whether to destroy it or linger in the beatific warmth of his gaze.

Holidays get you like that, don’t they? You slave all year for a few measly days in a better place – oh, and enough to put the roof over your head and the food on the table the rest of the year – then you zoom off somewhere else and remind your camera what it’s supposed to do. And it reminds you of what it can’t. So you recharge the battery and try again. Only by the time I’d got the camera functioning, it was our last day on holiday and I went trigger-happy.

“Do you fancy the beach, again?” I asked Sam.

“Not for the second day in a row,” he said. “Let’s head for the country. I could do with some green fields around me and the wind across the hilltops blowing the cobwebs out from between my ears.”

I chased him round the hotel bedroom until he turned and caught me and kissed me into submission, both of us laughing all the time. Then, we picked up our cameras and packed lunch and headed for the local bus and a trip into the country.

The bus was the town-link service, one of a hundred or so in the local livery. I have never blamed the bus. It took dangerous bends fast. It stopped at short notice to collect people hiding in the tall hedges that lined the single-track roads. It raced where I would have been cautious and dawdled where I would have rushed; even stopping once while the driver went into the newsagents and again while he delivered a couple of bags of shopping to a small cottage set back from the road.

“Your Mum all right?” one of the locals asked him as he climbed back into his cab.

“She is now she’s got the bread and coffee she forgot yesterday,” he answered.

“Ah! Breakfast is served,” called one of the other passengers.

“Delivered, more like,” said someone else.

Sam and I sat there, grinning like idiots, enjoying this glimpse into the local community.

We were almost sad to leave them when we got to our stop and started up the steep footpath towards the top of the hill and the long walk back to the hotel.

The scenery was stunning. Sky and sea were blue with the horizon a darker blue line with occasional sails or sets of funnels moving along it. The grass along the path seemed a brighter-than-usual green. Gulls wheeled overhead, glaring white against the sky. Both of us went trigger-happy, catching fleeting glimpses of butterflies and birds, dragonflies and bees, unusual angles on standard holiday scenes.

Near the road, the hill had been quite steep. We reached what we had thought of as the top – and wasn’t.

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