Ewe Crag Quarry, Grasmere

My favourite quarry for the many personal associations that go with it and for the best laminated slate.
I always feel  like 'the return of the native' when I come back,and avoiding the main paths I wandered over Loughrigg thinking of all the remembrances. It started with my usual uncanny capacity to switch the radio on as soon as Nimrod is played. I wondered about all the vicarious remembrances ....Hearing the last post I was reminded of one of the very few memories that mum ever seemed to have of her early life which was of her father crying whenever he heard the last post - I think he was gassed in the first world war. I thought about when Phil and I had taken mum and dad on holiday to Anglesey and, as we drove round Leicester, mum suddenly piped up, out of the fog of mind, 'I used to work here' ... remarkably she had been evacuated to the area and although she remembered little else this flashed into her mind. I thought about George's nightmares from Korea and of Phil's ex-army violent father (and wondered which came first, army/violence, and how one probably fed the other).
The first valentine's gift I gave Phil was a piece of laminated slate from this quarry with some ramblings about distillations of layers of love, of memory and of a deep understanding and acceptance of all that had bought us to this point.