You could say it had always been there. An enormous rock. Damned strong. And bulky. Even a quarter of it would weigh hundreds of tonnes on any scale. I’m telling you, it wasn’t a rock but the mother of all rocks. A giant of a rock. A god among rocks... Stationed, at ease, on the top part of the hill – all comfy and cosy, you’d think, like it was tipped lovingly into place by the hand of God. It was like a Lord. An eminent Lord. A powerful, commanding lord. Looking just the part, either despite itself or without knowing it. Interrupting thousands of glances at the magic, multi-coloured hem of the sky. The rock gave way to no-one’s eye or side-glance, no matter how keen, strong or imploring. It made them submissive, bent-necked slaves for their trouble, eclipsing their view. Planted there, it stood its ground with daunting authority Silent. Deadly silent. An ancient, dreamy silence that was timeless. Its own silent shape from a thousand different angles. Forever changing the look of its wrinkled, rocky body’s eternal shape – with hundreds of cheeky slopes, knee-like steps, calf-shaped collops, ear-like edges, sticky but bits, brows, warts, pimples, lumps, hundreds of eye-shaped features, hard skin, split ends, trillions of things.

You sensed from the whole angry-looking precipice of its head that the rock had seen all things. It didn’t have to look even. I just saw – unknown to the countryside around – all that lay ahead. Broad-backed fields. Small green hillocks. Good open grassland. Gapped, reedy boundaries. Openings. Cliffs. Strong ridges. Clefts and fissures. Bare slabs of rock. Long flat areas of stone. Some coated in mildew... And gardens. Loads of them. Shaped in squared, circles or triangles. Others irregular in shape. Rough –hewn paths. Soft damp bogs. Curving streams half-hidden from view. Deep glens stretching away out into the distance&ldots; And lower down, wide harbours, narrow creeks, straits, man-made quays, bright wide beaches, sometimes boxed in by the turning tide. The free, migrant ocean...

You’d think the rock was the wise old grandmother of them all. A quiet, taciturn grandmother who didn’t pay much heed to her charge, you might say... but who was always there, all the same, like a seasoned old-timer in a rocking chair. It didn’t let them out of its sight. Like a guardian angel watching from a distance. I eserved, and maybe even half-deaf. Looking like she was just dozing away there...

That was its life. That was all its locked ridged backbone had ever known.