It’s getting dark now. Except that’s not true because it never gets properly dark ever these days, even in the countryside. I can see the lights of the village twinkling in the bowl of land beneath my feet. It’s one of the advantages of a hilly landscape, that view. It’s extremely pretty when viewed from above. A fairytale scene. But later on, when people have gone to bed, some of those lights will stay on; there will always be some light somewhere, whereas in a true fairytale, the darkness, when it comes, is absolute. There are places where you still feel that dark up here, more than you will in 99.9 per cent of places in the rest of the United Kingdom. Some of the lonelier stretches of the river. Up by the kistvaen on Trembling Hill, half a mile past the silver and lead mine. But it’s still not the same, not like the old dark. Imagine: you’re in, let’s say, 1544. You look at the carvings in your church from many centuries ago, a time that seems so unimaginable and unreachable, and you try to understand their meaning, and you can’t read, so all you have to go on is what someone else in your village who also can’t read told you. First came mass literacy, then came the light. We use the light and shine it on the literature. We read our pagan pamphlets and our books and our WikiLinks and attempt to comprehend the past, and often believe we do. But light, like speed, is often an illusion. We angle our light on our previous findings, which were also made in the time of light, and we make our theories and we think we understand. But that light is like a slim epilogue to history. No, not even an epilogue, nothing so large, more like a brief acknowledgements page at most. You just can’t ignore the deep thick black that went before, just how long it lasted, just how dense and inexplicable it was, and all of what was buried within it.

I honestly can’t tell you how dark it once was around here. I couldn’t even begin to make you understand.

MESSAGE BOARD (2012)

Judith Sparrow: Has anyone spotted a horse rug on their travels? Purple, with red stripes. Last seen up near Hood Gate. Any information appreciated. My Thomas is getting cold.

Terence Black: Fantastic fish and chips tonight at the Stonemason’s Arms. Just right. Mushy peas.

Diana Wilson: I had some last week. Overcooked.

Gary Oliver: Everyone keep their eye out there’s a drone around in the night sky been seen looking for something worth pinching.

Gary Oliver: Don’t suppose anybody has two concrete slabs they don’t need any more?

Terence Black: Be vigilant about scam phone calls. A number has been calling me. International. Says I have been in a car crash nonsense I haven’t.