Final Night, Dublin, Dog & Wolf Tour
And suddenly it was done.
Six nights a week and I’m landing on a wee plane back at Exeter Airport. It’ll be about five days I’ve been at home as you’re reading this. All the sweet pleasures of the return have been in effect: the hearth fire, home cooking, the cats, evenings clinking glasses with friends and a great river of sleep – two naps a day at the moment. I still wake up and don’t know where I am. The car’s stopped but I’m still travelling. I have a pile of knitwear and a veritable column of books to remind me of where I’ve just been. I do miss the text from Tommy telling me he’s outside the hotel and the dream-fanglin’ drives through the B roads of ye olde Ireland.
When I’m awake I’m processing what just happened and pulling into shape many of the Saint and Biblical stories I’ve chewed at with you over the last few years. As you read these I’ll be halfway through a two-night run of them at St Lawrence’s Chapel in Ashburton. Can’t wait. It’ll just be a small gathering I think.
I must apologise for not being able to respond to last week’s comments. With Manchan’s death and the final evenings I just hit a wall of exhaustion, and found myself on low-stimulus survival mode. That doesn’t mean I didn’t read them – they are a tremendous tonic for me. I love meeting you there.
When I finally got myself out of bed I strolled the lanes down to St Gudula’s Well to splash some water in my face. In the early autumn light, and surrounded by high green hills and peering sheep, I baptised myself back into my homeland. I brought my imagination back, my enthusiasm back, my seeing back to the parish. These little rituals have tremendous vitality to me. I enclose myself in them. I remember some lines from the Carmina Gadelica and mutter away:
Let peace be with my horses,
Cattle, shaggy flock of sheep,
Peace be on the ripening sheafs
& growing crops.
Everything on high crag
To seaweeded beach,
Belongs to the Trinity.
All good Ashburtonians know that its water is efficacious to wash weak eyes with, and is still visited occasionally for that purpose. The name Gulwell is evidently a contraction of St Gudula’s well, the patron saint of the blind, who’s often represented with a lantern. Older folk used to collect water there, way back in the last century. There’s a story that St Gudula – terribly early – one morning wended her way to church before the cock crowed and was trailed by a demon who kept blowing her candle out. After calling to God in the frosty darkness, he ensured her light was not to be extinguished.
It is only a month or so till the Merrie pilgrimage to Walsingham, and less than that till I start visiting the Faculty of Divinity at Cambridge, so I’d wish for my eyes to be bright and clear, and my light not to be hampered as I wend my way through the dark.
So – back to the proverbial main dish. I hope you have your napkins. I want to pick up the thread from last week’s essay on the Red, Black & White and get behind the Red a little. One of the Red’s associations is passion, so I want to start with a Labrador Inuit story that sees heat as underpinning the earliest days.