Summer has settled over the Calder valley again. Intense sunlight blasts over the top of the woods and into the window of garret, where I sit to type. SD is asleep on the sofa with the Guardian Guide open across his chest. We walked to Hebden and back today, me, sweating out a hangover from last night. Now foot sore and heat weary we are back in the flat at 7pm, and another Sunday is drifting slowly to sunset and a new week waits, as yet unseen, burning within the fireball.
A strange week behind. Things have taken a strange turn at work as redundancies are once again on the cards. A handful of people from our floor are marked to leave, though in the typical style with which are so called touchy feeling organisation does thing, nothing is official or properly discussed. Instead, rumours abound, about who’s next, how bad it really is, whether we are really going under altogether. So far, I have again managed to pass below the radar. I even found out that I’ve been granted permission to go to South Africa this September to support the Homeless World Cup – and their paying my department 200 odd quid a day for privilege of me being there. That, and my bosses wedding at the end of the year, mean that I’m safe for the time begin I suppose, but times like these are good for reminding you of the instability of things, and for giving you the kick up the arse needed to get on with other plans.
So, I have been looking at building the empire this week – writing, of course, but also finding various morsels to give me hope of a life beyond: the hope of some freelance work here, a new programme for the PC to help me design there, a few books that have come my way, a few more ideas that might, just, given space enough, bare fruit. It’s all a matter of waiting and seeing, seeing and waiting – letting things bake in the summer heat. Like everyone, there are moments that I wish I could snap my fingers and be moving on to the next thing – and typically, as I talk about routine last week, now my thoughts bend towards a disruption to the routine again – I get excited by change, perhaps too readily.
But Todmorden. Walking home along the canal I saw the deep shadows of lush trees marked against the grassy hills near Dobroyd castle. Everything is so green here, lush and alive. Water rattles down the channel outside, the summer traffic heads home on the Rochdale road, lads, pissed up, stagger drunkenly on to the next pub, their skin red and shining. I went for a walk on Tuesday, or was it Wednesday, up onto the hills to the North near the Bridestones. There too, sweeping evening light, deep shadows, lush woodland. Home. In the chaos of everything else, with all this doubt and mystery during the week, then I come here, back here, and sit in the window and listen to the water running down the channel and see the sun hitting the woods on the hills, and I now that whatever happens, things will work out as they should.