๐ The Freedom of Being in Transit One of the more agreeable features of my profession is that it requires a considerable amount of travelling. The English courts are scattered across the country, often in towns which might otherwise remain little more than names upon a map. I have come to
๐ The People We Used to Be ใใใๆฒณใฎๆตใใฏ็ตถใใใใฆใใใใใใจใฎๆฐดใซใใใใ The river flows without ceasing, and yet its water is never the same.โ Kamo no Chลmei, Hลjลki (1212) ๐ Returning to the River Over a year ago, after walking the Kumano Kodo, I wrote about Chลmeiโs river. I took its ceaseless flow
Three experiments in freedom on the Isle of Wight An island is an obvious place on which to dream of escape. Water supplies a boundary that appears natural rather than defensive; the mainland remains visible, but its claims seem temporarily suspended. On the Isle of Wight, within a few miles
๐ The Colour of Beginnings I have made these photographs of Rome slightly too golden. Not extravagantly so. The marble has not become amber and the skies remain approximately the skies I saw. But I have warmed them. Travertine catches a little more afternoon light than perhaps it did; interiors glow
๐ฟ Before I Saw Corsica, I Smelt It Some landscapes announce themselves visually: the severe horizontality of the desert, the improbable green of an English valley after rain, the white villages of Andalusia beneath an intense blue. Corsica has plenty of this beauty. Its mountains rise abruptly, granite shouldering through vegetation;
๐ง๏ธ A House That Has Learned to Weather There are some places that seem to resist history. Their stones are scrubbed clean, their roofs carefully repaired, their gardens restored to the geometry intended by the original architect. They reassure us that beauty can be preserved if only enough money, labour, and
I cannot now remember precisely when I first saw the bridge. This is an odd admission. I have a photograph of it. I remember the heat of the afternoon and the brown water of the Avon below. I remember thinking that the gorge was greener than I had expected. Yet
At Barrington Court, the paths seem older than the gardens. This is not literally true, of course. The avenues, orchards, walls, and flower borders have all been shaped by human hands. Yet the paths possess a different quality. They feel less constructed than remembered. The long avenue stretching away from
โ๏ธ Battle Abbey and the Difficulty of Finding the Dead The day began at Battle Abbey, though I left not entirely certain where the battle itself had actually happened. That stayed with me more than the history. The strange inability to locate violence precisely. Somewhere beneath the soft Sussex slopes men
โA man can be himself only so long as he is alone.โ โ Arthur Schopenhauer The day began not with cliffs or castles, but with adolescence and consequence. In Weymouth Youth Court, I spent the morning listening to the small catastrophes of ordinary lives. Youth courts possess a peculiar sadness. Nothing
๐๏ธ Canterbury and the Ache of Home The last time I came to Canterbury, I was with the Vatican cricket team. There is something faintly comic about that memory now, though also strangely moving: priests and seminarians in cricket whites, Roman collars folded into luggage, the Vatican arriving in England not
โ๏ธ The Week of Lists A week in the magistratesโ court does something to the mind. Not dramatic, not even especially memorable, but cumulative. Lists of cases, each one clipped to the next, each one requiring a kind of immediate clarity. Names, dates, charges, pleas. The language becomes functional, almost hydraulic.