If there is one thing about living at 800 ft above sea level on the eastern moorlands of the lands formerly known as Elmet, it is above all else, that one is acutely aware of the ever-changing elements. One comes to realise that nature is in charge – not man.
As ridiculous as it may seem, forty years ago the RM would head off to primary school in the deep midwinter clad in short trousers, a duffel coat barely covering the thighs which were stung by those horizontal rains that sweep in from the West.
It is the same now as it ever was. Geo-engineered skies are swept away on days like this. It is elemental in the sense that one is in the midst of a vast sky and a saturated landscape whose presence looms large, whose voice is that of the winds which howl and caress the stone houses.
It is in the dancing trees in whose tops sway the crows’ nests, it is in the stuff of the peaty moorlands whose sodden turf precluded ancient peoples from building there, but who now, thanks largely to an anonymous collection of immigrant and dumb councillors, force through the sale of the lands to corporate agencies of state-sponsored ecocide. Continue reading “ELEMENTAL”
