Fond of the fields

by Emily May (United Kingdom (Great Britain))

Making a local connection Great Britain

I think I was around eleven years old when we visited the district, just northwest of England. Alone in the field, I stand and marvel at the vastness of green, not a cloud in the sky. But a marvellous one in front of me, with sharp twisted horns and a bold stare. The busty Ram blocked the single path back toward my family, who were unknowing of this vicious trott. This troll under my bridge. His hooves stomped as it appeared he was preparing to storm my bravery. In a single thought, I raced in the opposite direction and scrambled over the lazily stone laid walls, bringing a few of them with me. I had escaped with my life just barely and I was steaming with adrenaline. When I explained to my family they simply just blinked at me. The daytime consisted of splashing the landscape with watercolours, painting faces in the hills and the clouds. My dad had brought tiny easels along in which we rested our tiny canvas. The gale would blow them over and so our art became abstract... but we didn't mind it that way. The nighttime consisted of failing to tune the static microwave-sized television. The telly we called it, soon enough we'd get impatient and discard the brainwash box. Board games on the peeling carpet floor, my siblings and I and our great dad. The mice sprawled behind the walls as if to taunt us, heard but never seen. Another cottage friend was the radio, in which Dad would educate us all on the great teachings of rock n' roll. We'd laugh at the silly pop songs pretentiously, as if to say we're too good for that, but never too good to sleep among the mice and eat warm mash with gravy. Memories I hold dear to me as they slightly deteriorate, reminded sometimes by subtleties, like the smell of rain and farm sheep. Or the charred wood amongst a furnace. The Ram, however, danced around my mind, taunting me, laughing at me, an image I can never set free.