driving in the hills again

It was like we were hunting for the last bits of snow to be found. Yesterday we drove off into the Pennines and saw these wonderful hills, almost silver with distant snow. We had sandwiches from the flying saucer-shaped Services at Forton and - of course - a flask of tea, which we had out of plastic cups, up on the hills, looking at the view and talking to the multi-coloured Swaledale sheep.

We went to Sedburgh - the book town - but spent all our time in just one book shop: a colossal one, filled with ex-library books. What I was really looking for was the anthology pictured: The Jon Pertwee Book of Monsters. I'm still hankering to fill the gaps in my collection of Monster Anthologies I read when I was about twelve.

The Pennines remind me of my first wek away from home - it was a school trip to Ireshopeburn with our junior school class. We stayed in a big house in a valley and trudged miles through wintry woods and up the hills and drew pictures of trees and wildlife and had a brilliant time. Such an adventure. The dormitories were in this old, creaking attic of the house and it was just like being in a proper kids' ghost story. We got the screaming ab-dabs one night when a door on the wardrobe nearest to my friend Richard dropped off, seemingly of its own accord. It was a real creeeaakking SMASH noise in the dark.

The big thing was that it was a week away from family and telly and everything we were used to. We had a radio playing in the school room on Tuesday night for the charts - Adam and the Ants were number one, I think. They were always number one just then. It was the best week ever - we had the best teachers we ever had (Miss Booth and Mrs Woods!), and we were all togged up in parkas and cagouls. Scarves looped round and round, and all clutching clipboards with worksheets attached - ticking off examples of nature as we came across them.

Funny seeing the same landscape yesterday - the snow just clinging on, and the jagged montain streams fat and fast with melt water. It all looked exactly the same as 1981.

I was carrying with me, all day yesterday, a novel I feel as if I should have read back then. In fact, I can't believe I've got this far without ever reading Ursula K Le Guin's 'Wizard of Earthsea.' At least, I don't think I've never read it. It all seems very familiar so far - especially the disturbing 'clot of darkness' Ged summons into being when he starts messing around with spells and calling up spirits. It seems like some books I've absorbed as if by osmosis, and reading them is just like inking darker lines on faint pencils.

Those silver white hills in the Pennines looked like those old Magic Colouring Books, where you just had to daub water onto the page to make the colours wash in.