Christmas

I stepped out of the door. It’s never as grey outside as it seems inside. Almost ever never. And the air, in its sweet meadowsweetness for some reason carried the long ago smell of Christmas. Fleeting. Like a distant snippet of a melody: Once in Royal, or Silent Night.

Me, on the slate door step of Cae Rhys, staggered out from the tight fug of family, onto the ancient flagstone path, pissed and pissing, breathing in the smell of obstinate grass and rush growing in the butt end of the year and the stars arcing above over Moel Ysgafarnagod dragging me up into their dizzy undertow.

Woe betide we forget the smell of the upland still unsullied; the smell of the sea before we screwed up the last of everything; the arc of an unpolluted sky; the simple pull of give and take on almost equal terms.