In the weeks I returned I felt no resonance with this place, nothing to say.

This country’s stories are old stories now.

I feel like shouting: “Put those old stories in a locker, or leave them in a disused siding like an old steam train.

Get them out, visit them once in a while, if you must.

Even treat them with affection, like, at a wake, when we send away the dead in a buzz of goodwill, so they won’t wander restless, unsatisfied, in the afterlife.

But don’t be an old bore, rambling on about the past.

Why should anyone want to listen? What use is that?”

The fields were plain and orderly, uninteresting to me.

My connection has disappeared.

I feel ill-adapted, uncomprehending, stupid.

Today Maureen came round to my house, ostensibly to bring me some of her apple and ginger chutney.

“You’ve been quiet lately”, she said. “We haven’t seen you around.”

I didn’t know what to say.

“I think you are missing your family”, she said.

Again, I could not answer.

The phone rings.

Amanda wants to talk to Maureen. I tell Amanda she is here.

Tina came back this morning, rammed her Mercedes SL 500 into Derek’s electric gates, got out, walked to a friend’s house, called a taxi, and left.

Apparently he has refused to let her keep the car.

In the night, as I lay awake, I thought: “It was nice of Maureen to do that”.