The Island

Old gold and brown trout shout and slumber in the village burn beneath the lumber of the infrequent frantic and inarticulate lorries and vans the farmers barge by on the bridge above. A thousand years is all it took for the course of just one brook to burn down through the landscape of fields, an archaeologist exploring in a rut of his own choosing, allowing the waters to carry away the spoil and inviting fish to tourist up and down its nooks and gullies to gawp and gander at stones and stains.

A magic factory to fume and ferment the corporeal remains of stands of trees was smacked up on the ancient hill above the burn to burn its fermented oils and slag they say to service the electric needs of all the farmers and the others who live close by. Magic as it was it had an appetite for fuel that soon became a local legend. And soon the hill trees were gone and we had to organise a bovril-boat of tits and tats of mainland willow to come thrice weekly paying homage to the Giant on the hill.

The Giant hummed and hawked for nine whole months, a shareholder’s dream and a dumbstruck environmental quango’s bitter biteback and swallow. No rebirth was given to nature by the tubes and steel stills of the Giant beast. Instead, like magic, it choked the burn with bile and cleared the hills around its chimney. The nice men, in suits like plastic clipboards, paid their final telephone bill. Giant lay dead.

The tourists in the burn that still runs past the Giant’s grave and down beneath the fields far below would love the clarity and freedom of the water now. But rumbles on the bridge don’t scare those old brown trout no more.