in some distress and some despair,
I spent most days leaning against the wall of Grada Church,
hiding from the flame of the sun.
Grade Church.
The Church of St Grade.
Rebuilt last century, but with some old bits left, a tower too dangerous to climb,
remnants of an abandoned unmetalled road still visible,
from church to church,
past the old baptismal well
Each day it rained - and it often rains, the sun and the clouds making an item - I walked instead; but often walked there. And in the winter, in December, on the shortest, though not the coldest, day, I sheltered there. I've spent hours in the place church as the wind, unhindered now by many trees blows from the Channel to Mounts Bay, a warm hideous wind, till you get used to it, then cold and less bearable, days of wind and rain sometimes... but such a change from the deadly stillness of the colder counties... there I've sat in atheistic unscientific ignorance, there and at Church Cove, where some time in no more than a few millennia, the sea will have the Church and the village and even the earth-worked mound now almost an island... the power of the tide as it swings its soft hammers. I'd sit there from the fire, dazed by its memory and lasting effects, my rumbling brain estranged by angers which sundered me. Hours I'd sit there. The dangerous sun was blocked by the wall of the church, and I could go inside if the midges rose; but it seemed to hang still. It was a rare day I wore my watch. I took nothing with me. I survived. I remained attentive.