A walk with Sarah

My old friend Sarah came over at the weekend. She walked into the house and didn't look any older than the girl who first bounced over to me at Newcastle polytechnic almost thirty years ago, with bright red lipstick, jet black hair and a natty leather jacket. We talked and talked, as we always do on these too-brief weekends, and went walking over Stanhope moor.

We set off in damp weather but as we neared the top, the sad and poignant place where a bench is placed to a young soldier from Weardale who died in Afghanistan, we stopped and looked over the moors as the setting sun broke through turning everything gold and pewter. I often think of that young soldier, and if he was able to bring to mind these northern moors - which he surely must have explored as a boy - when he was in the desert.