Langdale

The Pikes in the distance and Loughrigg Tarn in the foreground.

I dug over the potato bed (I do wish that bl*%dy cat would go elsewhere) and salvaged any remaining potatoes and then headed down to the AgeUK furniture warehouse in Kendal. As part of my sorting and trying to rationalise space I decided a chair had to go, so off we went. Lo and behold there was a sofa that looked okay and will fit, and they can deliver. 
Kirkstone was closed this morning and I didn’t fancy driving back that way so went through the lakes and walked up Loughrigg from Ambleside. There was some snow on Fairfield and it struggled to stop raining but it was never very heavy until I got back down again.

Wondering about sense of self as I wandered the felltop where I feel such familiarity and yet now feeling somewhat estranged. A returning ghost (although connected always through nature, the ‘abiding partner and guide’). I looked down to Loughrigg Tarn where we regularly walked across for long suppers with K and D and D would bore me senseless talking at me about photography for hours. Beyond there, the Brit … what nights we had walking over there and then drunkenly back. And the Badger Bar with the action men, scaling the exposed rock wall in the ladies toilets and that wonderful panelled room. I looked across to Helm Crag where G’s first grandchild proudly climbed the Lion at the age of 6 … and then up into bonny Yasd’le where G’s ashes are scattered. I was sure I could hear the sound of a boy running free, tickling trout … ‘fair seed time …’
…and, nature, the constant … ‘still glides …’

Echo -  Christina Rossetti

Come to me in the silence of the night;
   Come in the speaking silence of a dream;
Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright
   As sunlight on a stream;
      Come back in tears,
O memory, hope, love of finished years.

Oh dream how sweet, too sweet, too bitter sweet,
   Whose wakening should have been in Paradise,
Where souls brimfull of love abide and meet;
   Where thirsting longing eyes
      Watch the slow door
That opening, letting in, lets out no more.

Yet come to me in dreams, that I may live
   My very life again tho’ cold in death:
Come back to me in dreams, that I may give
   Pulse for pulse, breath for breath:
      Speak low, lean low,
As long ago, my love, how long ago.