The Ghosts of Mill Lane.

Something brought Mill Lane to mind tonight, so I entered it into my blog search box and read all the old posts in which Mill Lane featured. There were plenty of them. And as with all such reflective endeavours, the memories came flooding back with it. It was much like looking through an old photograph album, or watching old home movies on a screen. Images on a screen are two dimensional, and so are shadows.

I remembered the big Rottweiler which stood by the gate of Newhouse Farm one cold, misty night, his breath steaming, his ears cocked, and his implacable stare still and intense. I remembered the nights I stood watching the stars, sketchpad in hand, trying to learn something about the constellations. (Mill Lane was the best place to study the night sky because of the distance between the hedgerow trees.) I remembered the cascade of blue lights around the tall fir tree in the garden of Rosemount at Christmastime, which glowed and pulsated quite magically in the frosty night air. I remembered the view of the creepy copse up on higher ground which stood eerily silhouetted against the eastern sky. I remembered the other-worldly sight of Walsage House glowing in the light of a full moon shining through the damp mist. I remembered the alpacas and the donkey and the giant sheep, and the American quarter horses which came for handfuls of fresh hay from the ungrazed side of the gate. I remembered the times I sang Raglan Road with some modest degree of gusto to the little people (and probably earned myself a reputation for strangeness in so doing. I recall not caring what reputation it earned me as long as it was on the odd side of normal.) And I remembered the indescribable loveliness of a young woman in a long summer frock watching her menfolk play croquet in the warm May sunshine.

I haven’t set foot on the hallowed tarmac of Mill Lane for over a year. A combination of circumstances led me to feel that the genius loci no longer welcomed my presence there, and who am I to deny the spirit of a place? And so it became my personal House of Usher, a ruined former edifice now crumbled into the marsh and occupied by nothing but distant souls and personal revenants.

I have dark moods these days, and what better to fill them with than the ghosts of old haunts? And isn’t it ironic that my reason for wanting to haunt Mill Lane myself one day is no longer there?