Commons

The house funeral quiet again, all activity prevented because Dad’s on nights. Grant was supposed to come at ten but I rang and told him not to bother until after Dad got up, and in a way I wished he wasn’t coming at all; I just couldn’t face the effort of talking and being sociable. While I waited I got half-way through Steinbeck’s Travels With Charley.

When Grant eventually arrived we stayed inside awhile, playing Coltrane, Clock DVA, Scritti Pollitti and The Dub Syndicate. He brought along a book by Lawrence Ferlinghetti and an article on the resurgence of interest in the Beats in England & America. . . .

Afterwards we went for a long walk in the grey gloom and rain along the canal to Brogden Wood Locks and up through the woods to Moxthorpe Commons. Despite the light shroud of misty drizzle, the views were tremendous up on the moor: onrushing sheets of rain, a bright white sky, fields silver and dark in the light, a panorama of houses, factories, schools, streets, cars and trees tucked into the roll of hills. To our backs an ominous black horizon line of distant moors, Easterby to our front, its tower blocks distinct amid the low hills.

I’ll miss all this when I go away.

We played about like kids, fighting, shouting and running. The weather was wild and grey and desolate. We got bogged down, tramping through oceans of waving bracken or squelching green rushes and moss, Grant falling into a tired quiet, barely communicating with me apart from the occasional grunt or word. Dried-up. The Commons was deserted, only the odd car or dog walker as we trudged back home in silence.

The weather cleared as we reached the woods beyond Brogden Wood Locks and we were treated to the sight of sunlight streaming through dark tree trunks and glittering bright on the bend in the river. I said to Grant that only now, perhaps since March, do I feel like I'm going in the right direction with this diary.

Up through cemetery stones to Egley and home, tea, records and more long quiet moments, making vague plans for the future. I loaned Grant Desolation Angels and he left.