Strid woods

Its half an hour until the third world-cup game of the day and I’m flat-out on the sofa, letting myself off the hook whilst I recover from the laser eye surgery I had the other day. I’m full of lentil dahl and a lethargy that only comes from hours and hours of watching sport, all that movement and chaos on the pitch sliding past your eyes whilst you lay stone-still with just a farting, twitching lurcher for company.

I decide to break the dordling flow of the day and get up to Barden Bridge for a walk round Strid woods with Rab. Sod the final game, let’s face the head rush and stand up. As we drive through Silsden the debris of an early England kick-off is everywhere, a girl is swaying about outside the Jet garage in an 1966 shirt and denim shorts, the pub doorways are a ajar with men and their pints, and there’s a que outside Curry Corner where two people are bend-double laughing. Nothing is at rest tonight, and Monday doesn’t exist for a few golden hours.

I reach the little car park just as Bolton Abbey packs its bags, a thousand families are heading home with fishing nets and sunburn, doors slam shut on tired children and then their faces peer out, fighting sleep until the very last. A young girl approaches me from the ice cream van she’d been hovering around when I pulled up.

“Do you have a phone? It’s just my boss was meant to pick me up ages ago and hasn’t turned up. My mum will be worried”

“I do, but not signal, never get it here” I’ve got my phone out to prove it

“Oh its fine” she seems suddenly very happy to leave it there, but I’m concerned now

“I can give you a lift if you like, to wherever you need to go”

“No, I’ll wait”

I don’t realise what’s going in until a few minutes later, how scared she is. There are a few things about me that I had forgotten when I left the house. For a start, the whites of my eyes are bright red with blood since the surgery and I look like I’m dressed up for Halloween, add to that the fact I haven’t washed today and the large helping of dahl that I have down my front and you’ll see how quickly she must have regretted talking to me.

But I wasn’t done, in a bid to reassure her, to let he know I wasn’t deserting her, that I am a good Samaritan, I say if he hasn’t turned up by the time I’ve finished my walk I’ll give her a lift. Poor girl. Never mind worrying about mum, now she’s got precisely as long as this weirdo’s walk takes to get picked up, or he’s giving her a lift even though his eyes are bleeding and he’s covered in what might be sick.

It’s a few weeks since I’ve been down here and the sweet smells of wild garlic and bluebells have given way to a musty, dry smell as ferns start to tower by the path and grass is cut for silage in nearby fields. It hasn’t rained properly for ages, earth is cracked and the moss is brittle on the baking-hot dry stone walls. It’s been an unrelenting day of tall heat, no clouds, just a moon out early in the blue above fells, who are resting now in the low evening light. Curlews are frantic about everything, and every so often one gets caught from underneath by the warm glowing sun, orange now where it should be grey. Gulls too, they’re not at rest for some reason, not the blackbirds either who are scalding alarm calls back and forth all over. Surely a hawk is around?

I’ve been drawn down here a lot since Ali died, she came here to be free when undergoing treatment, to magic up characters and plots for her novella and to blast herself out from under a disease that hard as it might try couldn’t keep her from nature. She was no doubt pleased with the lack of phone signal too, a bit of time where none of us could be in touch, subconsciously seeking her reassurance, hoping she was having a good day. I think about her when I’m walking these same paths, and it makes me smile that she had this place, this time out of mind in the woods. Of everywhere I go this is where I find her easiest and it’s her defiance that inhabits me as we trudge around under the filtered light, me looking for hawks and Rabbit looking for squirrels.

When we get back to the car the girl has gone, and I’m probably more relieved than her, I mean how could I make it any better – I’d end up refusing her the lift to make a point or something. I drive back over Embsay Moor as the sun tilts off into one of those eternal midsummer sunsets. I catch the last ten minutes of the match on the radio and I’ve missed a good game but nothing compares to an hour or two in Ali’s woods.