Can you hear me calling?

First, I would like to offer my sincere apologies for using a line by Phil Collins. I can only explain that it is very hot, and perhaps I’ve drunk a little more Hobgoblin that I should. If I’ve sunk to such depths, that’s actually pretty much going to be the case. So I might as well open another one.

I’ve made a bit of a discovery, today. Because I enjoy going to new places, I’ve been walking in the Presili hills in Pembrokeshire. Mountains they call them, but to be honest when I examined them on the map last night (does it come as a surprise to anyone that I have an addiction to maps? And WHY in the name of every god known to man is there no medical term for this? Are you there, Doctor Sam??? Your chance to make a name for yourself.) they looked more like pimples, or zits. The highest point is lower than most car parks, and walk from the nearest car park to the highest point in the ‘range’ is a paltry metres.

And yet, from the ‘top’ of Foel Eryr, and iron age burial ground

the views were immense. Such a huge reward, for what was a tiny effort. Honestly, were I less environmentally conscious, what my friend MTM – she’s on this blog tomorrow, by the way – terms the punishment mobile: the punishment for the crime of getting caught- could have comfortably driven to the top, even though it isn’t four wheel drive, and is sometimes not even two wheel drive.

Anyway, what has this experience to offer us as writers? Because if we are being serious about writing, everything has something to offer us, doesn’t it? Well, it is this: usually big rewards for us come from big efforts. You throw a lot of money at marketing, you work your socks off on social media and everywhere else trying to promote your work, and maybe it gets you somewhere. It certainly gets you further than doing nothing. But just occasionally, you do something casual and unusual, and receive a huge and unexpected reward. never turn away any experience, any opportunity, for you have no idea where it might lead. I hopped into the car on a whim, and wandered up a pimple of a hill, and found a little patch of heaven on earth.

On the way down, I found some Pembrokeshire Bluestone.

Now, this is roughly where the great stones at the heart of Stonehenge were born and quarried, thousands of years ago. Dreaming in the warm sunshine on the Solstice, could these stones have heard their lost brothers calling home across the miles and years?

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