autumn day in hexham

Up we got and out.

As we reached the cenotaph a huge crowd stood hushed as a Northumbrian piper played a lament. The day was sullen and lent itself this thick silence of reflection stitched with the piper's lament. The people turned inwards all, heads to the ground.

We followed the town, through the tight alleyways and cobblestone, down to the River Tyne. There were rowers out in the chill of the morning. A lass in bare arms and a swimming costume.

We walked upriver for a bit, a rowboat gliding by, skimming across the water in frictionless ease. The oars leaving behind dimples of its passing. There were nuthatches singing, the first I've ever seen. The mulch of autumn filthy wet in our nostrils.

We went to a car boot sale in a sheep market looking for furniture for my friends' new home but no luck. It took place in a maze of sheep pens at the farmer's market. A faint whiff of shit about the whole thing.

And so we left it where it was and crossed back over the bridge into town. So much old stone and brick. The textures and architecture is a wonderful muddle. I had plenty of shots I liked in the camera when, just shy of the bridge, was a fallen leaf on the grass. Another leaf irradiating itself into my soul. Click, I had my blip.

And on this day of the fallen, of remembrance of the pointless barbarity of war and the innocent lives lost in their ever repeating cycles, this bright dead thing on the ordinary grass seemed a fitting enough testimony to the day.