16:00

Grey, freezing afternoon.

The triangulation point unreachable, set in a moat of ice.

The wind so strong that when I opened my mouth it inflated itself like a cherub in reverse.

I had been lured here by the thought of a sacred grove. The lane was not so empty as I expected, the dog-walkers were hearty, we all liked each other. Soon I lost touch with them, though. I was going to a place no-one goes. When I got there I was too frightened in the gnarled trees to take any pictures, but I told myself they'd have been crap anyway.

"Told myself" is a phrase forever asociated with the Mills & Boon genre, but I needed it here.

Any writer who evokes magic isn't just a romancer but a charlatan. That's what I believe. Just because of Balzac, that doesn't make it OK. Still, I suppose I worshipped a god, just by being frightened. Not an enlightened god.

I can't apologise for posting these solitary rambling fancies, but they are a product I view with a little suspicion; an almost exclusively male genre describing an almost exlusively male experience - a solitary woman walker is something I never see. Apparently it's a genre immensely attractive to male poets ever since Marvell and Milton, and it still propels such significant modern poems as Peter Riley's Alstonefield.

I suppose it forms part of a larger class of social narrative, the "while I wasn't with you" story - and no doubt part of my impulse to go out lay in thinking about how I might talk about it later. - Other narratives like this are: "My fishing expedition"; "On my morning run"; "On my way to work"; "In the office"; "I had a strange dream last night" and "My heavy drinks session". Such stories are ideal for topping up with a little charlatanry when needed.

I saw the north terraces of the hill rusty with beech-leaves from the adjoining wood.