The Square and Compass, Worth Matravers – Day

Summer has staged an unexpected comeback. Determined to go out with a suicidal explosion of heat, it gives us a gin bottle blue sky untroubled by cloud. This is the final passionate kiss. A goodbye to remind you what you will be missing as your love leaves the hemisphere.

Crippled, all I can do is let my ripped flesh warm in the sun. Sit on stone so soaked with memory it holds a thousand stories. I try to numb the pain with mind-blurring strength perry. A taste echoing back to wilding times.

The Square and Compass is built on a special spot. The perfection of English feng shui. Sea to the front of me. Hills to my back. Wind warped trees to my sides. Vital energy riding the wind. The place recharges me.

We have arrived in the middle of a pumpkin festival. Giant, bloated orange balls of concentrated sunshine have colonised every available space outside the pub. Mutant squashes tumble down the side of the Fossil Museum.  

Chickens tumble around me. There is a constant dance of sparrows from the trees to the ground to scrabble for pasty crumbs. A local with a Catweazle beard wheezes down the lane on a bike which is clearly more corrosion than dependable metal.

White walls. Painfully blue skies. The last gasp of tree green. A hundred shades of orange from Princeton to safety to burnt marmalade. This is an English autumn coloured with a Disney palette.

I cannot help but feel as is I have stumbled out of the mundane into an archetypal England. Some higher mystical form of the land usually only ever seen reflected in art. English dreaming manifest.

My body may be broken, but my soul is healing.