0118 Wyeth County

We knew the history of the area, of course; reckoning that with a Heritage Site just over the hill planning permits would be hard to get and the rolling landscape, and our own prized view, would stay that way. Clearing the ditch beyond the orchard, by the line of old trees, I found it. A musket. still loaded (I realised later, cleaning it up) and a scrap of disintegrating coloured cloth still with a button on it. A button. It was the button that put paid to my former life: as if with the harsh scrape of iron cartwheel on stony track, the past had arrived; stolen the present from our comfortable grasp, with a cartload of heavy, worn, war-weary baggage, and taken up residence in our front parlour with its proudly sourced 'folk furniture' that now looked like imposters in hiding. It was when I drove into our small town next day and the faces of the locals whom I thought I knew so well looked at me with eyes that seemed to own clothes heavy with history and fierce division that I knew that the past had claimed us and that our lives would never quite be ours again And that we must discover, not war but human pride under the no longer picturesque landscape which we can no longer pretend to own.