The following is an extract from On Gallows Down: Place, Protest and Belonging (Chelsea Green Publishing, October 2021) by Nicola Chester and is reprinted with permission from the publisher.
Bird in a Landscape
It is St George’s Day, late April, two days shy of my birthday. The sky is the colour of a pheasant’s egg and skylarks are singing against it at such a height I can’t see them. A just discernible shimmer of heat blurs the near horizon of orange gravel that marks the old runway of this former US airbase. I am sitting on my hands on top of an old American fire hydrant, its once-smooth sides speckled with rust and yellow and red paint curled and crusted like lichen. I can’t quite reach the ground and sit swinging my legs, a toe occasionally reaching a knobbly chunk of flint to kick away. I think I’ve been stood up.
Continue reading An extract from ‘On Gallows Down’ by Nicola Chester
