Pictures of Dereliction

Words from Robert Frost's 'Mending Wall'. (It's not an especially relevant poem, but I like these lines from it here!)

So it turns out that Adrian had two molars removed from the left side of his lower jaw when he was 13 or 14, so now it seems we are a mirror of each other! (Only I'm not bald - although the way I'm going right now, that's probably next - and he's not not-quite-five-foot-small). Funny how somehow I didn't know that or - more likely - he told me but it was, like, teeth, innit? Who cares?

So it won't need a psychoanalyst to work out why, when I went off for my regular morning walk this morning, up the track and to the vineyard with Monty, I felt magnetically-drawn to the crumbling old walls of derelict houses and farm buildings that dot the route; to the rusting iron remains of bed springs and old fences, and to a still-smoking bonfire that sits plumb in the middle of a piece of land that last week was completely alive with bushes and trees, and is now a levelled piece of earth, covered only with thorny debris, and revelations of old concrete and iron fixings from erstwhile dwellings. I couldn't help my gaze lingering on the burnt waste, still smarting, black and subdued. A strident broken, bright pink plastic bottle of Vanish, half-hidden by tumbling ferns. A peak through the granite boulders to see inside what was once someone's home, now adrift with lianas. But everywhere, too, thrusting out of crevices, clinging onto the hard rock, pops of vital colour, and the verdancy of foliage providing a protective layer.

It's been a really hard couple of weeks. But we're still here, and we're still standing - just about!