Authors Electric

First I was riding my bike along narrow roads which were miles out in the country, then I was walking along familiar streets in a town I thought might be Dundee, but I wasn’t certain of it. I came to a spiral staircase and started climbing it. Near the top I found I couldn’t go any further, then I realised it was because an old man was sitting on one of the steps. He was dirty and dressed in bulky old clothes. He started to stand, muttering apologies and saying it wasn’t open yet, but I saw that I was nearly at the top and the staircase just led to a wall with no door, no breach in it, so I told him not to get up and I started back down the steps. That was an actual dream and the reason I describe it is because it’s like the dog in my previous post – it calls out for meaning. What do the various elements represent? What do they mean ? And what did the dog mean ? The short (and correct) answer is nothing. I did climb the hill, see the stump, speculate about the granite  ...

Some of this blog is true. Earlier this year, when the weather was warmer, I walked up a hill which is just a 20 minute drive away but takes me up and out of streets and into heather and vistas. As soon as you start climbing away from cars and people, you can let yourself think that mystical stuff is possible. As usual, there were several pauses on the way up because it’s steep in places and, with only trees around, you just stand there and you’re just open to whatever jumps into your head. This time, one of those whatevers was a bloke called Simon de Montfort. We spent a year in France a while back, in the South West, the Languedoc region, and that’s where Simon indulged his fancies, one of which struck me particularly forcibly. He was leader of crusaders who were laying siege to Béziers, where a sect called the Cathars were holed up with some Catholic sympathisers. (This was back in the 13 th century.) One of the charming things he did to try to persuade them to give u...