Corinivm

All I needed was to pack up and walk a mile down the road. Instead I had lain in the field under the Tuscan sun as it completed a full arc brushed by a single cloud whilst nature danced liberated. As the sun died I perched on the impressive amphitheater from where the market place spread, settled by long nosed Florentine merchants, square jawed legionaries and speckled or flaming Celts.

On the incline the source of a mighty waterway seasonally bubbles up through dislodged stone into channels tracing the seams of a quilt. On the decline a slender narrow cut valley soaks in warmth then drips with dew, ripening for the banquets in the villas cast over the vista in their thick hewed stone draped with vines and ornaments.

A man motivated to develop the communications infrastructure in Helmand to suport the promises of the Kandahar dam breaks the isolation.

The brambles in the carpark

Why not break from my chair and cycle through the bustle of Shirley and across the Test? Why not cycle through the forest where Toton give way to free roaming horses grazing on thick wet pasture and the undergrowth bristles with the late pickings of the summer? Read not at my desk but over looking the murky folding canopy pierced by a sporadic spire, morphing softly and dramatically as the sun begins to spill its tears across the land. Wash through the last remaining thoughts of the day with the fresh produce of the Avon in a glowing haven of mortar and wood and ponder with the dew of the Spey. Let the doe dance before my headlight on the winding country path.

Why cower between the sheets when my shaky legs can carry me? Past the stores as workers return from their shifts, stumble through the tail end of the quarter of the night and join the market before it has begun. Find a place, between container yard, monotone blocks and angry bypass, full of imagination and smiles.