This Isn't the Sort of Thing That Happens to Someone Like You Part 9

Gayton le Marsh, Chapel Six Marshes, Marshchapel, Holbeach Marsh.

Brentingby, Wyfordby, Bescaby, Stonesby, Saxby, Stainby, Gunby, Dunsby, Hacconby, Ingoldsby, Keisby, Dalderby, Winceby, Asgarby, Hundleby, Scrivelsby, Spilsby, New Spilsby, Great Dalby, South Ormsby, Wood Enderby, Ab Kettleby, Old Somerby, Bag Enderby, Coningsby, Miningsby, Aslackby, Hanby, Humby, Thimbleby, Gautby, Wickenby, Fulnetby, Bleasby, Wragby, Sotby, Ranby, Goulceby, Asterby, Raithby, Maltby, Scamblesby, Swaby, Grimoldby, Manby, Aunby, Careby, Carlby, Thrulby, Saltby, Revesby, Raithby, Dalby, Graby, Dowsby, Tumby, Th.o.r.esby, Somersby, Goadby Marwood, Kirkby Green, Boothby Pagnell, Kirkby on Bain, Ashby Puerorum, Irby in the Marsh, Hemingby, Tealby, Kirkby, Kingerby, Ketsby, Calceby, Rigsby, Raithby, Sutterby, Utterby, Ashby de la Lounde, North Ormsby, North Th.o.r.esby, Grimsby, Tumby Woodside, Mavis Enderby, New Spilsby, West Ashby, Little Dalby, Little Grimsby, Ashby c.u.m Fenby, Normanby le Wold, Fulletby, Salmonby, Worlaby, Fotherby, Legsby, Walesby, OsG.o.dby, Usselby, Claxby, Croxby, Grainsby, Hagnaby, Aylesby, Candlesby, Barnoldby le Beck, Irby upon Humber, Ulceby Skitter, Dragonby, Keadby, Ulceby Cross, Ulceby, Worlaby, Bonby, Wrawby, Appleby, Risby, Brumby, Scawby, Bigby, Somerby, Searby, Owmby, Grasby, Clixby, Usselby, Snitterby, Atterby, Aisby, Saundby, Kexby, Normanby, Saxby, Barnetby le Wold, Hareby, Wilksby, Brattleby, Bransby, Skegby, Harby, Saxilby, Whisby, Thurlby, Firsby, Boothby Graffoe, Navenby, Digby, Ewerby, Asgarby, North Rauceby, South Rauceby, East Kirkby, East Firsby, Aisby, Aunsby, West Firsby, Gonerby Hill Foot, Grebby, Aswardby, Driby, Osbournby, Caenby, Granby, Barrowby, Welby, Oasby, Kelby, Braceby, Haceby, Dembleby, Aswarby, Scott Willoughby, Silk Willoughby, Saltfleetby, Great Gonerby, North Owersby, South Owersby, Spanby, Coleby, Ashby, Aby.

Westry, Whittlesey, March.

Dogsthorpe, Longthorpe, Westhorpe, Wilsthorpe, Belmesthorpe, Northorpe, Obthorpe, Manthorpe, Leesthorpe, Grimsthorpe, Elsthorpe, Scottlethorpe, Hawthorpe, Hanthorpe, Garthorpe, Milthorpe, Castlethorpe, Kettlethorpe, Skellingthorpe, Gra.s.sthorpe, Besthorpe, Winthorpe, Kirkby la Thorpe, Woolsthorpe by Colsterworth, Woolsthorpe, Derrythorpe, Birthorpe, Far Thorpe, Mid Thorpe, Kingthorpe, Swinthorpe, Friesthorpe, Woodthorpe, Claythorpe, Authorpe, Althorpe, Yaddlethorpe, Yawthorpe, Thorpe in the Fallows, Caythorpe, Sibthorpe, Biscathorpe, Buslingthorpe, Sc.u.n.thorpe, Grainthorpe, Londonthorpe, Scotterthorpe, Northorpe, Gunthorpe, Springthorpe, Culverthorpe, Mablethorpe, Manthorpe, Aisthorpe, Hogsthorpe, Little Cawthorpe, Trusthorpe, Thorpe Satchville, Thorpe Arnold, Thorpe.

Loosegate, Fleet Hargate, Gate Burton, Broadgate, Horsegate, Halesgate, Wrangle Lowgate, Deeping Gate, Westgate, Chapelgate, Guanockgate, Halton Holegate, Gedney Broadgate.

Dogd.y.k.e, Skeld.y.k.e, Sead.y.k.e, Fosd.y.k.e, Austendike, Gedney d.y.k.e, Thorpe Fend.y.k.es, Quadring Eaudike, d.y.k.e.

Old Leake, Leake Commonside, Leake Gride, New Leake, Leake Ings.

Pinchbeck, Pinchbeck Bars, Swallowbeck, Pinchbeck West, Fulbeck, Woodbeck, Sudbrooke, Binbrook, Sedgebrook.

Chainbridge, Cuckoo Bridge, Fosd.y.k.e Bridge, Swineshead Bridge, Hubbert's Bridge, Gipsey Bridge, Bis...o...b..idge, Bracebridge, Friday Bridge, Pondersbridge, Tattershall Bridge, Forty Foot Bridge.

Stickford, Tetford, Belchford, Snarford, Ludford, Spalford, Stapleford, Langford, Sleaford, Hazelford, Bottesford, Scalford, Twyford, Greatford.

Owston Ferry, East Ferry, High Ferry.

Holbeach St Matthew, Holbeach St Marks, Holbeach St Johns, Marshland St James, Sutton St James, Sutton St Edmund, Deeping St James, Deeping St Nicholas, Wisbech St Mary, Wainfleet St Mary, Witham St Hughs, Saltfleetby St Peter, Toynton St Peter, Thorpe St Peter, Walpole St Peter, Walpole St Andrew, Terrington St John, Tilney St Lawrence, Theddlethorpe St Helen, Wiggenhall St Germans, Wiggenhall St Mary the Virgin, Wiggenhall St Mary Magdalen, Toynton All Saints, Saxby All Saints, Wainfleet All Saints, Theddlethorpe All Saints.

Ring's End, Fen End, Surfeet Seas End, Tongue End, Brand End, Moulton Seas End, Scrane End, Kirton End, Frampton West End, Fishmere End, North End, Benington Sea End, Halltoft End, As.h.i.+ngton End, Gedney Drove End, Tilney High End, Bridge End, Castle End, Church End.

Eastville, Midville, Wyville, Frithville, Little London, Jerusalem, Gibraltar, Boston, New England, Newark, New York.

In summer the sky is most times blue.

A blue so pure & bright that it hurts to look into it .

A blue so deep that if you look straight up you have to grab something for fear of falling in.

The light pouring which pours from out of this blueness sears everything it can reach / fields of wheat / ca.n.a.ls & drains / tarmac roads / In summer the sky is blue & lifted high a s.h.i.+mmering blue silence from which there is no hiding place (save) beneath the surface of the land.

back he came back for the taste of her like he was pa.s.sing through the sky to go somewhere and do something back In autumn the sky is most times white.

A ragged, dirty white.

And you wonder how this could be the same sky but it is.

The earth turns thick & hard beneath it.

Winds rip through the clouds and slashes of light run across the fields and vanish over the horizon and leave the land as heavy as before.

back The colours of the earth change. Westry Fields & ditches clog with leaves. Whittlesey Rivers swell. Pondersbridge Forty Foot Bridge Ticks Moor West Moor Ten Mile Bank Salter's Lode Outwell Friday Bridge If you had stayed at home it would never have happened.

back We know the seasons are changing mostly by the shape & colour of the sky.

back s t r e t c h e d o v e r u s f r o m h o r i z o n t o h o r i z o n t h e l e n g t h & b r e a d t h o f a d a y .

back In winter the sky is most times grey.

A dark & bruising grey.

The days shorten.

The distance between the horizon shrinks. What little light seeps down is thick & lifeless.

In winter there's no danger of falling into the sky Our bodies anch.o.r.ed to the ground by the weight of the light.

The earth hides secrets.

The land is silent.

The drains & ca.n.a.ls will freeze and be covered in snow.

The snow will come fast in the night and block the roads & drains and leave nothing but whiteness (all lines & textures concealed).

The land giving back light to the sky.

back In spring the sky is all these colours. Spring comes gradually here.

Broad beans & early wheat break through the surface of the soil.

Pale green buds squeeze out from dry branches while the sky fades to light grey & white & finally a faint blue.

The air cleanses itself is cleansed, with by a warm wind from the south bursts of sparkling rain The sky lifts away from the ground.

those arms lifted up to the sky.

The horizons draw apart and stretch the sky taut and s.p.a.ce & light flood back into our lives.

that arching back.

back This is the time when change is a daily force: woodlands smeared green overnight fields purpled with lavender behind your back wives & mothers & daughters pregnant by dawn This is the time when the floods come and the ditches and barriers have to be built again, a little deeper a little higher But still, with all this life bursting up towards the sky, (the earth holds secrets) (the sky watches) back The hills having eyes means nothing here.

The land is level and all we have watching over us is the sky.

back This place I've grown up in is a landscape of lines, a world of the parallel & perpendicular.

The straightest line of all is the hard blur of the horizon.

A single unbending line which encircles the day.

When I was As a child I would spin around with my eyes on the horizon trying to catch the place where the line turned or bent but I never could back the mystery of the straight, encircling line.

(All the) other lines find their way to the horizon sooner or later back High lines, (Years ago, playing in the connecting lines: telegraph wires furrows while your father railway tracks watched, you looked up + ca.n.a.ls saw a line of boats gliding drains through the sky. The fear rivers you felt, seeing those boats above your head.) Low lines, boundary lines: ditches (No hedges or walls roads between fields here, paths only the ditches + roads.

Ditches to stop the sea reclaiming what it owns.) back The lines of this place are sometimes washed out by floods.

Obliteration.

Water erasing the (Cornelius the Dutchman manmade geometry digging his way through restoring this place the 17th century.) to the sea it once was.

Sometimes it will be rain, swelling the rivers until they break through and rush over the fields, settling across hundreds of acres for weeks at a time, sky below as well as above, clouds & seabirds gliding overhead sky above as well as below, clouds & seabirds gliding overland.

back Or snow will cover everything, blocking drains & roads, ..........

Mothers forbidding their children to leave the house.

Lost children in the fields.

You said you don't remember your mother telling you to go out, but you would have been too young to remember/to go out.

back Sometimes the fog will come in with the floods and our world will become unmappable, alien, precarious.

I didn't say you said it was my fault back These same floods that obliterate bring life to the land, make our soil the richest in the country.

At ploughing time the smell of the earth hangs in the air, a smell like apple bruises and horse chestnut sh.e.l.ls.

A smell of pure energy.

back Your father claimed this ground would grow five-pound notes if you planted a s.h.i.+lling.

That I would like to see.

back Flatness straight lines a manmade geometry.

The sound of metal on soil // the sky above This is the landscape you I we grew up in.

This is the landscape which grew us which made us.

back The sea wants to be here. we shouldn't be surprised when will give to that Our engineering gives way before the sea's desire.

back You didn't say that. That's not what you said back to name these places The words we've been given by our ancestors have no poetry.

Our waterways are called drains, not rivers or streams or brooks or burns: Thirty Foot Drain Sixteen Foot Drain (and the closest to grandeur, this) Hundred Foot Drain our farms named for anonymity: Lower Field Farm Middle Field Farm Sixteen Foot Farm People don't come here because they've been People are not drawn here by the romantic sound of the place.

People don't much come here at all, and so the landscape remains empty and retains its beauty and the beauty of this place is not in the names but the shapes the flatness / hugeness / completeness of the landscape.

Only what is beneath the surface of the earth is hidden (and sometimes not even that) and everything else is made visible beneath the sky.

back When the dawn comes when the first light slides in from the east the sky is the colour of marbles.

A thin, gla.s.sy grey.

Everything is dark away to the west, silhouettes & shadows clinging to the last of the night, but at the eastern edge of the horizon there is light.

And If you have the time to stand and watch, you can trace the movement of the light into the morning.

The lines of fields & roads creeping towards you and then away to the west until the whole geometry of the day is revealed.

And The water in the drains begins to steam & s.h.i.+ne.

And you'll notice The workers start to arrive, stepping out from minibuses and spreading across the fields, shadows crouching & shuffling along the crop-lines lines of the crops.

back When the mid-morning comes the sky is the colour of flowering linseed a pale-blue hint of the full colour to come back Sometimes there will be clouds, joining together to form arches from horizon to horizon stretching tearing scattering patterns across the fields.

Sometimes these clouds bring rain, and the sky will darken But the rain will pa.s.s the sky be brighter clearer back The workers more visible, returning to their trays & boxes after the rain, lifting food from the ground, sorting tr.i.m.m.i.n.g laying down moving along the line.

Occasionally one will stand, lifting cramped arms to the sky before returning to the soil.

Those lifted arms, that arching back.

back When the noon-time comes (when there's a moment of stillness and silence) the sky is the colour of the summer noon: a blue with no comparison the pure deep blue of the summer noon in this place.

No clouds no movement you hold your breath and turn and follow the circle of the unbending horizon line horizon's circle.

back The workers eat their lunch in silence, gathered beside the road, looking out across the fields the way fishermen watch the sea.

back Celery & spring onions & leeks & lettuces & fragile crops which would be ruined by machinery.

back When the late afternoon comes (when the light is only beginning to fade from the day fall) the sky is the colour of a freshly forming bruise.

The workers are slowing their pace pausing more frequently to savour the warmth of the soil in their hands aware now of the slight chill in the air waiting for the word that the day is over.

back - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - - - -.

What placement can do.

back When the evening comes (before the embers of the closing of the day) the sky is the colour of your father's eyes.

A darkening, muddied blue, hiding shadows turning away. Awake, still; alive, just; but going.

Going gently.

The workers have left the field and collected their pay, measured by the weight of the food they have gathered.

The marks of their footprints are fading, dusted over with soil blown in by a wind from the sea.