Old delights

Colin Wilson regards the onset of Christianity as a disaster for ‘magical’ man. “Christianity was an epidemic rather than a religion. It appealed to fear, hysteria and ignorance. It spread across the Western world, not because it was true, but because human beings are gullible and superstitious” (p. 272). The doctrinaire and ruthless nature of Christianity fitted well with the savagery of the world into which it sprang, hence its success.

I was in Easterby during the afternoon, the day hot and sunny more akin to high summer than the stutterings of early spring. Town was packed, but for once I quite enjoyed the jostle and throng and had a contented day; I bought a couple of books, a pair of plimsolls and had a curry at the Bahawal . . . the old delights.

I took leave of the city centre and wandered aimlessly through the mills and warehouses and near-empty streets between Leckenby Road and the Polytechnic, full of thoughts of Lee and Grant. How is it that Easterby seems unreal? Even when I walk in it I can’t grasp it; it’s as though I’m blinded by my image of the town, a conception that’s grown from all my memories and the past lives I’ve lived here, from Lee, Grant, from Ashburn, Lodgehill and Hainsworth Hall, the derelict mills and houses . . . If I try to rationalise the point it merely makes it all the more diffuse and difficult to grasp.

My mental Easterby is as real as the Easterby of actuality. It’s only when we’re distanced from the places we take for granted that we appreciate them, stepping back from unthinking involvement with environments and realising them for the first time.