(After you have read these introductory paragraphs once, you can skip to the new/old content here. If you are listening, then the time stamp is around the two minute 45 second mark.)IntroductionThe word settled, to me, carries connotations I am keen to avoid. I have never felt settled or, perhaps, I cannot recall a time I felt settled. I do not feel settled now, writing this, and I’ve lived in the same house for three and a half years. Without even discussing the obvious issues of colonisation, I just don’t feel like I could, or should, settle; better to keep my constituent parts shook up, agitated perhaps, rather than separating and stagnant.Instead, I feel as though I have been travelling for years, maybe because I have not lived in my ‘home’ nation of Scotland for eight and a half years, perhaps because I know I won’t stay here forever, or maybe because I carry that concept of home in a way which differs from many?More precisely, I still think of myself as a slow traveller, globally feral. Recently, I have been revisiting places through the photographs and words I recorded when my feet crossed their soil. This is a way of reminding myself of where I have been, not just in space and time, but in mind, too. It is a wonderful thing, to come out of a low and rediscover myself through words I crafted, through the lens of a camera, when memory has wandered in the fog for too long. Thank you, past me.When I first started sharing letters with the world in this fashion, six or more years ago, I usually began them with a vignette of where I was, a sort-of travel diary, mixed with nature observation, locking in the setting for the reader, before I spoke of other things—and, by so doing, ensuring that place fed into the whole. It was a useful device, for reader and myself both but, as these letters were sent to so few readers, and now languish archived behind a paywall, I thought it a shame not to share these snippets again.As such, I am going to share a short series of these sketches, accompanied by a photograph from that time, sent to you in date order.I shall include the above paragraphs in each of the letters in this series, but I shall also include a link at the very start, so you can skip ahead once you are familiar with the above words. If you are listening and similarly want to skip, then the timestamp you want to navigate to will be in the same place.Taken without these paragraphs, each is a short read, and I hope you enjoy them.Cercal, Alentejo, Portugal. April 2020Outside the window, the world warms, stories of life everywhere.Swirls of storks climb invisible spirals. Beneath, strata of swallows manoeuvre, twist, brake and snatch, manoeuvre, twist, brake and snatch. Lower still, plummeting sparrows, falling from our eaves to the orange grove below, a constant squabble. Beyond the storks rises a bird of prey, perhaps a buzzard, perhaps something else, I do not have my binoculars to confirm and the angle is off. Three crows mob and give chase, an explosion of collared doves below, flashing from thicket to thicket. Earlier, two ravens headed west, scaring the same doves and a brace of wood pigeon, a cycle which continues throughout the day.The shepherd is moving the sheep from the field with the olives to the one with the holm oak shade. His dog, at this distance, could be a hunting wolf. Further, a field of brown and well-fed cattle move along the edge in single file, a solitary dark horse in the field between, geese, chickens, and vegetable gardens closer still. Dusty tree-lined trails mark boundaries, arteries to the wilder places beyond this village.Here, the trees and bushes are mostly green, with the others in blossom or still awaiting their moment, to burst into leaf once more. This is a reversal from the land I grew up within, where the verdancy of holly or ivy was welcome in the winter, whilst all else slept, drained of colour, a monochrome hibernation. The cork oaks, the oranges and lemons, the satsumas, the eucalyptus, the holm oaks and others I am still trying to identify: this is a rolling land of green winters and blue, blue, azul skies. It is a land of surprisingly cold winds and reassuringly warm sun, sudden dawn and swift sunset, a land chiming with the church bell, toll unchanged through centuries. Sleek cats cross the village on terracotta clay tiles, a highway in the sky, a stratum of their own. Below, the dogs bark at their scent and the ink shadow of a returning stork brushes across shining paper-white walls, today’s approach to the nest directly parallel to our kitchen window.The local Grandmothers hush the dogs, shoo the hens and sit for a spell, short woollen cloaks over their shoulders, sun seeping into leathery tanned skin, heating old bones, mimicking the lizards in the grass. Warmed, they move fast, determined: sweeping, hanging laundry, cooking on braziers, moving heavy wooden furniture outside to clean. Another pause and an animated discussion with neighbours...
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