Month: June 2012

6.45 AM, Hillbarn Golf Course, West Sussex: The morning is bright, the sun having risen over the hill beyond. I stop near a green on this lovely course, sparkling under a heavy dew.
On the green are the footmarks of a couple of players, onto and off the green. One set approaches the hole, to remove the flag probably. Then two other sets lead to the start of two delicate curves, each ending at the hole. Successful putts for the two players in their early morning game, at least on this hole.
The dew will be gone now, three hours later, under the warm sun. The imprint of those minutes might remain in the players’ memory, but like much of our lives it’s temporary and ephemeral.
What does really count, or last? And in whose memory?

25 June, 2012

Since Easter, more or less, it has rained most of the time apart from two weeks in May. To our surprise Marian and I had chosen those weeks for our annual pilgrimage/holiday near Brecon. The evening we arrived the gentlest rain kissed us welcome and our last day was pretty wet. Between the sun shone fit to bust.

Within the national park lie both the Black Mountain (to the west) and the Black Mountains (to the east.) Looking at the ordnance survey map I saw what might be a gentle walk to a lake, Llyn Y Fan Fach.  It was an easy trek up a track built by the local water company to the lake, which is a natural one but which has been formalised into a dam. The dam wall was a good place to snooze after lunch.

Then Marian and I walked up the slope to which my feet are pointing to gaze down the steep cliffs scoured out by an ice-age glacier to the lake below.

The view was glorious, sweeping over the far Usk valley and the Usk reservoir, where we’d brewed some tea while watching a couple of local men reel in rainbow trout, perhaps bedazzled by the sunshine, more than I could count.