Distance: 6.4km
Accessibility: Full hiking up steep hillsides. No real path. Walking gear a requirement.
Landscape: Open hillside.
Time to get the muscles burning.
Windsor Hill dominates the local landscape. A dotting of trees crowns a mount teeming with grass and wildflowers. The world surrounds the top in a full 360 degrees. A route worthy of Jack and Jill.
This was a journey of exercise rather than discovery. Up the side at a good pace, a swift coffee break at the ‘summit’, and then straight back down.
After a battered sign advising caution, and the lack of a clear path, the steepness increased to the level of a pulled back wrist. Even after all these walks my calves protested the incline. I reverted to the old trick of letting your mind wander. You must allow the metres to disappear in a world of thought. Of the past.
I thought back to the early days of the Butter Mouse. After we appeared on Red Peter, a bulging sack of fan mail appeared at my publishers every three days. I took weekly trips to schools from Cornwallis all the way up to Edinburgh. An extra-large sponge puppet of the Butter Mouse accompanied me on every trip. The students always spoke to him without breaking the magical illusion. He is up in the roof now, hidden behind a stack of CDs.
I insisted that every child received a badge on these visits. A few back a the publishing house protested this was a waste of money, but I knew this was canny advertising. Book profits out weighted the price of a few metal circles.
I guess Archie must get it from somewhere.
The surrealist moment was when the TV series appeared. My involvement consisted of a few brief meetings about the scripts and possible ideas. Then one day they popped up on a Saturday morning sofa session. Watching my characters pop into life at breakfast time was the fluid world of imagination cementing with reality. How on earth did they get from inside my head to behind a glass screen?
This was a good time, a positive time where creativity flowed like a river. We purchased the City House. Thus the origin of the House In The Woods derives from all that work. But those opportunities were like a quiver of arrows. Did I use them in the best way? What targets did I miss?
The top of the hill levelled in conjunction with these thoughts. My thighs groaned, and the ligaments surrounding my right ankle thrummed under any weight.
I looked to the view, and
::Need to pause there Barbara. All these memories are like electricity in my gut. They make me want to walk into the corner of the room, and rest my head against the cold paint.
Perhaps I should drop the whole walking angle, and turn this into a memoir? But then how much would anyone care? We’ve not shifted anywhere as near as many books recently.
Reading this through again- do I come across as ungrateful?
Is cementing a word?
I'll keep going with the walks for now. They are at least stimulating my imagination. You won't believe what I found on the other side of the hill.::
