Category / The Clearing

It is the day of my father’s cremation, and I am more than five thousand miles away, in China, walking the banks of a river whose name I do not even know.…

As we pull up in the van a car is pulling away, the driver still wearing his wetsuit, too cold to take it off outside. The rest of Britain’s snowed under, but…

My father’s house is by the sea, so close to the sea that an onshore wind can lift the white caps and coat his windows with a curtain of spume, and a…

Sometimes things can hide from us in plain view. The ash tree was one of the last trees I remember learning to identify when I was young. You learn horse chestnuts and…