MICHAEL Morrison, the main character in my story The Choreography of Ghosts, is haunted by the failure of his second novel Walks Through Weeping Cities and seeks new streets to haunt. Sometimes though, you just can’t find them.
A PUBLIC footpath sign offers direction but I don’t want to go that way. Maybe I should. Signs are there for a reason but I’ve mostly ignored them.
Despite the low clouds I can see over to Cononley, Farnhill, Kildwick, follow the railway line towards Skipton, the hills climbing above Silsden and heading Keighley way, but the pinnacles over Cowling are shrouded in mist.
Pinnacles. They always seemed just out of reach.
It strikes me that I never thought I lived in the countryside, but almost everywhere there are fields, the lamps of cars cutting through on roads built on land no longer farmed.
An elderly chap with a dog tells me it’s a lovely morning for it. He doesn’t specify what but I assume he means a Christmas walk in the park with or without a canine companion.
A couple smile and say hello. There are some nice people around here.
A group of six ignore my greetings. There are some ignorant people around here.
I see someone I think I vaguely recognise from school but realise it might not be them as they are older than me. As I walk on it occurs that they probably aren’t.
A monument - a stone needle on a plinth - without names stops me in my tracks. An intended war memorial but no one died? Sadly not. More likely another tribute to Victoria, I conclude.
There are nice houses on this hill and the decorations are more tasteful/expensive than those further down. Isn’t that always the way?
I head towards the railway track and as always recall my induction into the gang when I was about ten. The gang didn’t actually exist and a slip off the railway bridge wall and neither would I.
Fat people, thin people, young and old, but unlike last year none that I know, no “I haven’t seen you for years” conversations.
I detour round a back street as I’m beyond chat now and I don’t want to get stopped by someone who wants to catch up on the past 40 years. Except really I do but time is of the essence.
I’m thinking of change - there’s been a lot yet everything seems the same - and of the buildings and shops that housed people I used to know. They are gone now. Moved away or real gone. Their existence here just a tiny and always reducing part of history. No memorials for them. Or maybe a collective one without a name?
My increasing annoyance at slow walkers delaying my progress to nowhere in particular serves as a pointer to turn for home. Mum’s home. Not mine, my brother’s, my family’s anymore. Ah, that ever reducing part of history again.
A village committee sign tells me “it’s the most wonderful time of the year” and that “volunteers make it happen”.
In a way that is true of everything. None of us asked to be here but very few choose to leave and, even when we go, however that may be, part of us remains.
We walk on, all of us, and sometimes, like today, we do so alone.
I stop while a little hope remains in my heart.