Landscape Memory

A Thin Place

Norfolk is generally described as a flat place but to me it’s ‘a thin place’, a place suffused with memory, a place which draws me down and lifts me up. The big skies, the tall trees the wide open, empty spaces. I can feel the landscape gently tug at my roots, guiding me to old haunts, reminding me of where I once belonged.

Each morning I’m awoken by old friends, the bubbling sound of goldfinches, the twitter of a wren, the soft low coo cooing of collared doves, the mellow call of wood pigeons, the familiar see siriri of a bluetits the low, harsh grating of crows flying past my window in search of sticks to build their nests. If a crow nests high up, it’ll be a good summer.

Each year in late spring, I used to get that itchy feet feeling. As a child, in early May, once the grass had started growing, we’d be off in the wagon. The cat would get restless as we began packing our things into net bags, sorting through wooden bowls and old pots, the kettle and iron. Mum would get the hamper out and fill it with cereal, lightweight cutlery, pots of brown sugar, Barleycup and raisins. A weight would begin to lift off her. When on the road she seemed younger, lighter, happier. Was a need to move and be on the road a response to trauma? She said it was the only time she ever slept well.

If Norfolk is my roots, west Cornwall and west Penwith are my wings. These regions are so far apart from one another but in many ways they are similar. Both remote, both out on a limb, both suffused with mystery, folklore, community and emptiness. Cornwall is poorer than Norfolk, the trees all stunted, the weather wetter and wilder. Norfolk is dryer, colder in winter, hotter in summer. The light in these two places is different, brighter in Cornwall, more sepia up here. I’ve missed the Norfolk skies, the sunsets, the frosty mornings.

A friend of mine does a hilarious impression of a Cornish tree. She holds out her arms and leans forward at an angle. It never fails to make me laugh. It’s hard to imagine trees as tall as the ones you get up in Norfolk when you’ve lived in west Cornwall for so long; a place stunted and battered by stormy weather. Living at the far end of a peninsular can feel a bit like living at out at sea. The toe of the sock which is west Penwith has an island feel. The uppermost furthest end of the toe is often misty, warm mist in the summer, cold mist in the winter. There’s a kind of peace at the extremities of the British Isles.

Last night I listened to the dulcet tones of a young woman with misshapen dreadlocks wearing blue lipstick. ‘Time to fly free,’ she said, cradling her guitar. Her blue lips curved upwards into a smile before breaking into song. She sang of a bird escaping from a cage. A gilded cage a friend’s husband once called my home in west Cornwall. At the time I felt powerless and trapped. But now I feel as though I belong there too. Perhaps he saw me as a butterfly, like the one on the cover of The Magus but perhaps this was my destiny.

Time takes on a different meaning when we get older. It begins to speed up, ‘You wait ‘til you get to my age’ Mum said to me once she’d retired. After decades of struggle and guilt, she made a conscious decision to try and enjoy every last remaining minute. Three hundred and fifty miles away, I felt her life on this earth waning, dissipating like mist. I too wanted to make the most of it. We wished we lived nearer to one another, that she were closer to my children.

For me time has become like a telescope, one which zooms both in and out. I don’t see time as linear, rather circular and vortex like. I’m surrounded by invisible ghosts, upheld by visceral memories. Each common and roadside verge I pass reminds me of times on the road. My very DNA is steeped in this landscape. But my feet are beginning to itch. Time to move on.