Abroad thoughts from home

The photographs in the previous post do no justice: the point was the space, the wind, the outside-ness (most of cities is indoors) that refuses to be framed. And stepping out to the end of the road at night and seeing one lit window on the opposite side of the valley, beneath the folds of the hills. On a hilltop, overlooking the low ruined walls of an abandoned village, Rocky casually remarked that if I were lost up here in a storm, I’d die. He’d survive. It’s true. The opposite doesn’t hold: in the city, where survival skills are less about self-reliance and more about social interaction, he might not be a happy man but he’d survive here too, because he can read people as well as trees.

The above is much more framable: an old filling station by the side of the road, just south of the border. There’s no diner, but it’s still not a bad location for a re-make of The Postman Always Rings Twice.

Next week, the London Book Fair, a depressing business: so many books I’ll never want to read, and everyone dressed to sell. Every so often I’ll remember the hills, and gasp for fresh air.