Holiday

It is made of a limestone gorge with caves, a long lake. It is comfrey and nettles, hemlock, mint and dock. It is peaceful after the roads.

It is made of an inn, dark with rows of bottles on dark shelves, of the smell of ale, of quiz, of laughter, of noise late into the night, of music: the fiddle, the accordion, the bodhran.

It is made of Summer wine. Of good bread and old-fashioned cakes and exotic cheese and pokerwork keyrings in a market hall. It is made of preaching, an enthusiastic Yorkshireman as full of the Word as seaside rock is full of letters.

Of Hepworth and Scholey amid showers. Of quiet streets of sombre gritty stone houses. Of leafy elder trees and hilly paths and streams and drystone walls. Of scenery and spacious moors. Of brilliant greens and intense grey skies, almost indigo, and clouds that envelop us. Of Delph, Dobcross, Diggle and Denshaw. Of Shelley, Shepley and Denby Dale.

Of trams rattling through the rainy city. Of tea at a terminus. Of reunions and talk and vegetable soup and plum brandy and new YouTube delights.

It is made of Hayfield and grassy fields, of a hill and cobbles and a reservoir, a memorial garden and a riverside. Of a general store where they sell loose eggs and apple slices. Of Rosie's tea shop: tea bread, orange and almond cake with cream, English breakfast tea, Russian Caravan tea, Lapsang Souchong.

It is made of New Mills which are old, of a coalpit, of John Potts the engraver in his studio, of jiving and be-bop forbidden. Of a rushing river, a lofty golden viaduct, a railing tied with cloth snippets, hidden in a gorge full of trees.

It is made of a strange metal post and recorded bird cries - the skylark, the curlew, the plover. Of pie and peas at Angie's kitchen. Of history and industry and a dark, bulky church. It is made of a still towpath and a heathery hill and reddening-leaved fireweed and red-creepered house, of a tunnel and a shut inn festooned with bunting limp in the dripping rain.