Northbound? by Julia Jones
More than a decade ago in The Salt-Stained Book (2011) D onny, the hero, was by the shores of Gitchee Gumee (okay, fact checkers, it was Alton Water, a reservoir near Ipswich in Suffolk) when he felt the tang of the North Wind. It was a life-changing moment, the extent of which he has yet to experience fully. That’s a thought-in-progress. More recently I’ve been reading Paul Heiney’s Goodbye Mr Puffin which includes a wonderful page of praise for that same ‘tang’. ‘ I love anything with the word ‘north’ in it. I adore the air that blows in northern parts for its freshness and its tang. I can sup on it as if it were a glass of the finest claret. The true north wind is the tastiest of all and best when it is close to frigid.’ Heiney writes of the ‘spirituality to be found by heading in the direction of north.’ Is this something that Donny will experience? I’m not sure. In 2018, at the end of Pebble , I left him on a Russian superyacht (she was originally an Arctic s...