A Writer's Life

                'Hope is not a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa and clutch, feeling lucky. It is an axe you break down doors with in an emergency’. Rebecca Solnit, Hope .  Just a few steps away from diesel-belching lorries and the constant trans-Pennine tourist traffic of the A66, is an almost invisible track sloping steeply down to the edge of a turnip field. The footpath sign is obscured by elder and hawthorn, but I know where to look and how to find it.  Walking alone lets you notice things at micro-level – the way overnight rain has swirled the long grasses into patterns, the way the trees are colouring up – each species a different shade of yellow or amber. You notice the ghosts in the landscape too – deer toothmarks on the bark of a tree, the footprints of an otter on the sandy fringe of the river, the tracks of badger and fox. I walk along the edge of the field, a row of ancient oak trees on my left in all their autumn colou...