The wind blew harder, I shivered as I went.

The field was cut in two by a row of trees, one of the trees was leaning on another- brothers or comrades from another time, maybe they leant on each other when this field was a battlefield in a separate age. and the line of trees was a line of soldiers.

I could ask them but this would foolhardy because the trees do not like to be talked to.

The wind was calmer now it still roared across the land, speaking without words, it’s meaning is plain if you listen but I must be moving on, even now I could see the first indications of human settlement, I had come a long way but there was still further to go.

Behind the whispy windswept clouds, the many ringed moon shone clearly in the starry sky.

I went down an incline towards the lights and sound of the London Road.

I walked eastwards on the narrow pavement beside it, cold and tired, not yielding to the aching spreading through my body, I felt my consciousness fading into a blissful stupour, a part of me not responsible for thinking guiding my slow steady movement.

I was slipping into the world of dreams and nightmares.

They wore black feathery cloaks had bony rotting child’s bodies but faces of grown up corpses, people I knew.

Down the road came a clip-clopping, it was a pony and trap, the fact the rider wore a bike lock like a sash, glowed faintly and wore a deer skull with antlers on his face was irrelevant, a couple of cars overtook him needlessly close.

The hedges by the road rustled aggressively so I quickened my step, in the middle of the road was a traffic island that had recently been hit.

The air smelt of excrement, hopefully a result of dungspreading.

A rush of cares went by all at once, it is with bareness and emptiness and dullness and hardship when everything falls into shape.

When I am alone and travelling at night, does this rush of dreams come from the land around me? or were they inside me all along and just evacuating themselves in the quiet and stillness?

After all everything comes down to the land, all money, all power, almost all sustenance, why not spiritual sustenance as well?

No.

It cannot save itself against the ravages of Humanity and it could not save those who relied upon it in the face of modern civilisation, it swallowed them up, a mother who eats her children, it cannot save me, it’s begging me for help, it’s no use begging from it.

The fields ended and houses began, outside one of the houses a weeping willow danced in the aimless wind, it started raining.

Cold and numb, I continued moving and thinking:

It is better to have tried and failed than to have tried and succeeded, Taking your thoughts and plans into the grimy world of reality must be a terrible burden and a terrible responsibility, because your effect on history may not turn out to be a good one. But never trying is like a death. After all failure is by far the best way of learning, and perhaps even teaching, someone who is wrong and not afraid to be wrong is better than someone who is wrong and afraid to admit it.

“Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven.” That is root of all knowledge, that is what Socrates taught and Plato neglected.

An electronic phantom was emitted by a telecoms box and floated through my eyeballs to put an end to such disordered reasoning, my feet leave the ground and I float onwards.

Past the bus stop, allotments, Surgery, RC Church, man in a black coat wearing black headphones listening to Jordan Peterson talk about Jungian archetypes, faster and faster not slowing down.

A passing idiot in a car beeped at me, a flock of geese flew overhead honking desolately and determinedly. Mashed up leaves lie on the ground, further demons emerge from another telecom box.

A scrap of paper danced in the wind.

By the door of a house an ornate bell, nostalgia for another’s age.

I dissolve into the environment and another self underneath me like a layer of an onion is revealed.

Now I am an old woman in an oversized thick coat with a carrier bag and wearing a headtorch, on my way to Tesco.

I remember when it was a Londis, I turn off the headtorch.

The doors swish open ahwshhhht-t-t-t-t-t, I step out of the dark into the light, I pass the multipack crisps, I go past the meal deal section, the fruit and the vegetables, the meat, I turn left into the tins, so many tins.

These tins all contain body parts, eyeballs, fingers, thumbs, thumbnails, tracheas ,kidneys etc…

I pick up a tin of tongues, there is a picture of a fresh pink healthy tongue on the label, under ingredients was listed: Fredrick Ayres, Frank Elliot, Maurice Falconer, Water, Salt, Mixed herbs and spices.

I put the tin back, then I see the shop assistant coming down the aisle with a trolley carrying a meat processing device, a range of carving knives and a big stack of uncapped, unlabled tins, she’s coming to put me into tins, it happens to us all in the end.

I am the plastic bag blowing in the wind, I am the row of black bollards beside the road, I am the paving beneath a strangers feet, I am the person who lives above the pharmacy in the corner, I am a discarded coffee cup lying beside an overflowing litter-bin, a draft in a phone box, I am a traffic jam. I am this entire section of The Old Bath Road.

I am a haze rising from the tarmac, forming into an invisible orb, drawn onwards to an as yet unknown destination.

I cease to be both everything and nothing and I am again walking, looking down at my feet watching the cracks in the pavement, I am drinking a can of Red Bull, a cyclist goes past, I drain the can and drop it on the ground, it is my contribution the character and soul of the landscape, proof of the destruction inherent in capitalist systems.

The birds pecking for grubs in the fields beside the road looked at me and muttered to themselves about my anti-social behaviour, I must be careful. The cows walk from the far end of the field as if to greet me, my attention is distracted by the dandelions and fool’s parsley beside the path.

Bits of cardboard were distributed tastefully among the varying kinds of nettles.

I kicked an empty coke can, but felt guilty about it, why was it any less worthy of respect than I was?

Didn’t it have a soul as well?

Dandelions actually grew up through the curb and the cracks in the tarmac, life cannot be suppressed for long, I reflected.

I saw a face looking out from a drain holding on to the bars of the grille like a prisoner, I walked faster.

A siren in the distance wailed.

There was a burnt patch in the grass beside the pavement, a single traffic cone stood in the central reservation.

I passed a cardboard box once full of cans of Cherry Cocacola, a tree stump, a house covered in scaffolding, a flowerpot full of weeds, innumerable parked cars and a great deal of moss growing in the cracks and depressions.

There was a smell of washing detergent.

I heard pigeons cooing.

All was right with the world.

I went straight on at the roundabout.

The weeds and the grass and the bushes whispered joyfully.

In a sideroad someone was making heavy weather of turning round.

I went on over the bridge then down the hill.

The traffic was now heavy.

One of the houses by the road had a metal dragonfly on the wall.

I passed a woman in a pink coat walking her dog.

The dog stared at me.

There was a broken pink child’s umbrella on the ground.

The ground was covered in mushy fallen leaves.

I went past Aldi, I saw a latex glove in the branches of a young tree.

My God, the noise of the cars and smell of petrol and decomposing leaves was overwhelming.

The Bus went past.

A McDonald’s box in the ornamental bushes, how delectable, a napkin folded neatly inside it.

I went under the railway bridge and went past the terraced houses opposite the park.

Despite of my resolution I kicked an empty coffee cup.

I passed the Conservative Club and turned into the back streets.

In the distance I saw a gasometer and heard powertools.

I passed kids going to school.

I passed a corner shop, I walked onto the towpath by the canal.

The geese and seagulls called to me.

Red brick houses lined the canal.

I climbed stone stairs onto the bridge.

Past the old offices, past the bus stop, past the tower blocks, past the prison, past the old church, past the policewoman, across the road and across the road and into the station.