No matter how you hang your ears, there’s a background hum to the world right now that’s hard to ignore.
To Boldly Grow
Continental Drift
It’s the Year of the Toad, of Gentle Repose: 2020. The date has a beautiful symmetry, but like 1919, it’s a little buggy. A century ago Nature ran H1N1 in multiple iterations, codenamed Spanish; this year we see the dissemination of SARS-CoV-2 #Wuhan.
Estranged Systems
I can’t say I love a face full of midges. Lake lover, yes: sunrise, sunset, a day-appeasing libation, cob loaf, row boat. But midges, in their lecherous low clouds, waiting to press their faces onto my skin? No.
Spring Break, Summer Stitches Holding
Copyright Urban Mole 2018
We’ve had a little pause in publication here at the Mole due to the editor being knocked down by a Polo; seems both the front and the back of VWs are dangerous.
Childhood
Copyright Urban Mole 2017
I’m eight and I might be the only boy with a pigeon inside his head. It’s like blowing air into empty bottles: a sound behind my eyes, as far back as my ears, but a bit more towards the top. Hu Huuuu Hu, hu hu.
Baking on the Beligian Border
Copyright Urban Mole 2017
When the Martians arrived above New Jersey in 1938, panic spread among the credulous [1]. People couldn’t flee far enough, partly because they were left breathless from all the screaming, but mostly because there was no way to outpace a threat so fast moving as to be near-omnipresent. A potentially hostile force had crossed the American border.
As the Corvidae Fly
Copyright Urban Mole 2016
A beautiful aspect of winter is the chance to rise in the dark at the start of the day. If you’re fortunate, your coffee may be brewing as the sky pales and you catch a flock of crows flying hundred-fold under the last stars, calling out or soaring in ragged spirals before playfully chasing each other onwards to their feeding grounds. The flocks can number in the thousands, taking several minutes to pass, coming from roosts that may contain hundreds of thousands. What better way to enjoy breakfast?
Limits
Copyright Karin Mora 2016
Ah, the beautiful view of the woods outside, thin enough to thread a truck through and full of that tree, and the one with the conkers.
I used to play conkers as a child but was told not to eat them. We ate them in autumn around braziers stood at the bounds of markets, at the parish bounds of a church built in the “old days”.
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