by James Roberts | Feb 5, 2022 | Journal
I remember an encyclopaedia of animals with a green cover, faded gold lettering, a loose spine cracked at each end, the pages bent at the corners and warped from damp. Not an old book but badly worn by the daily handling by my younger sister and I over six or seven...
by James Roberts | Sep 15, 2019 | Journal
Only the towers and walls of this island are shaped the way they’re meant to be. Out on the water, paddling around the cliffs, I get a feel for the place as it was and might be again, when we’re gone, which could be soon
by James Roberts | Jul 1, 2019 | Journal
Dusk approaches. The hill is windless and quiet. Moorhens carefully crosshatch the surface of the pool wrinkling the inverted images of squall-clouds that have been gathering for an hour. A faint curtain of rain closes across the mountains twenty miles away. I am...
by James Roberts | Feb 19, 2019 | Journal
I don’t remember the name of the town where the railway started, or the destination at the end of the line, only that the train sometimes arrived, but most of the time didn’t. I think I waited a week. There were a handful of half-ruined colonial buildings...
by James Roberts | Jan 19, 2019 | Journal
The statistics: it has taken 12 hours to smooth the surface, 4 shifts of 3 hours, first with 60, then 80, then 120 grit paper. Dust gathering on me, my hands following the rings as they appeared from beneath the deep scores made by the chainsaw. I could have done all...
by James Roberts | Dec 16, 2018 | Journal
On the last day of a family holiday I sneaked out of the caravan just after dawn and walked to my favourite spot on the cliff to say goodbye to the sea. The place was near an old stone hut where fisherman used to keep watch for the pilchard shoals coming close to...
