One walk can take many paths.
One walk can take many paths.
I rebuked my partner for suggesting the short route around the village.
Damn it! I needed adventure. That was my gut anyway.
Alone, I set out south, then veered west into the blaze of afternoon sun and azure skies.
I climbed the bowl between Southcote Wood and Easton Hill. I picnicked at the top.
I started walking down the chalk track towards the village and threw a plum stone across the hedge. I halted as the familiar sight of a low military helicopter entered the frame of my trajectory.
It buzzed, black, unmarked and menacing, guns bristling like an insect’s stings, over my head as I filmed, and disappeared behind the trees.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGLSMrRr2v8
But the noise, no longer deafening, did not disappear totally. It lingered. The aircraft must be hovering, surveying, but what? You and I know what.
My mind jumps back to the disgruntled farmer I had chatted with on the 10th of July 2020. Amongst other things, he said,
“I’m cutting it down now” and “I have cctv footage of the artists arriving in a van last night” and “it’s in the hands of the police”.
At the time, I respected his property and his economy, despite not agreeing with his decisions.
Then, on this September afternoon two months later, I see his lie and I am sad that he chose to. The enormous undulating field is perfectly tilled in the afternoon sunshine but, even from a great distance away, I can see the shadow of an old friend.
That’s what the helicopter was looking at. The sometime advertising of Her Majesty’s Army is, “Be The Best.” To be the best, you have to learn from the best. A logical place to start must be the crop circles that have defied explanation for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.
I yomp up to take a look. It is magical! There is no shadow, just an alternative colouration of the very earth! Did the men with their planks and boards dye the ground? That seems like an improbable answer given the immensity of their initial undercover exertions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLPcL1lfGWk
Did the farmer specifically try to kill off or encourage his crop, in only that place, with pesticide or fertiliser? Given what a tiny fragment of the original crop had been laid down, this again seems like a mad decision in farming terms.
Maybe the helicopter had been testing a new weapon from it’s undercarriage? To choose the exact spot that a crop circle had appeared two months previous, instead of any random and private spot on the military’s Plain playground to the south, again seems nonsensical.
Or maybe a column of energy, bounced between the sun and the earth’s core and back again did it? Countless eye witnesses to this phenomenon will be in no doubt.
After documenting my experience, I headed across the fields to the Bruce Arms for a couple of pints of west country water (cider).
With apple juice in hand, I contemplated the infinite. This was meant to happen. I chose this path. As repeated in Bert Janssen’s excellent new book, ‘The Organising Principle’, “There are no coincidences”.
With this in mind, I set out for home. My path took me back to where this all started. I imagined a work of fiction, Circum Navigation, two years ago before I had ever visited a crop circle. Since then, a number of these beautiful artworks have appeared at the very places I had previously fantasised.
In Chapter One, ‘Feeling High’, Harry meets the Rasta for the first time and then has his first experience of plasma orbs. I sat down beside that same field. Two deer skipped across the sprouting winter crop towards Martinsell Hill. Lazy kites lolloped into roost and flocks of fattened pigeons scarpered.
The sun growled low to my left, the intense green of the field and blue of the sky intensified in her glory. A surreal wall of cloud appears above my head, the rays from our life giver smashing through its chinks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTGkJ10jhjo
Was it going to happen again? Was I going to see localised lightning, clouds and orbs, like I recently did on Milk Hill, in the very place that I had imagined it?
No. Not this time. But I will keep hunting. In the meantime, here’s ‘Feeling High’ as a taster for this life of adventure.
Chapter One of Circum Navigation
“Feeling High”
Wiltshire is a queer place. A sparsely populated landlocked island of serene beauty and magnetic charm buried in the West of England. Its gentle undulations of Ice Age escarpments, barren plateaus, curved cliffs, rolling hillocks, distant valleys, saucer shaped fields, lush meadows and clear chalk streams make it a rare jewel of nature.
For a multitude of millenia mankind has been drawn to it. Neolithic hunter gatherers patrolled, then metal Ages farmers settled on the hills. Travellers came in large numbers as pilgrimage to its mighty stone and wood henges along its ancient water courses. European influences from Rome and Scandinavia added fortifications, the natural ridgeways made perfect demarcation points between subsequent kingdoms. After Norman conquest the settlements drifted down into the valleys to create the sturdy villages of today. First timber and straw then warmer brick cottages, before the larger edifices of the triumphant Industrial Revolution were born along the new canal waterways and subsequent steel train tracks.
Perhaps the queerest spot in this strange county is the Vale of Pewsey. If you are travelling south west from Berkshire, there is an obvious topological change when leaving Hungerford for the Vale. It immediately becomes more bleak and mystical as you start to become hemmed in by the gallowed ridge far above Inkpen. The hangman’s gibbet overshadows any transgression below. Indeed, if you stray off the beaten track to Vernham Dean and climb the hill to the ancient Fosbury hill fort, you border Hampshire, a third county. There is no doubt where the oddest countryside is as you look across the bleak hill tops to the sharp ridged edges of the valley, as it snakes its way past it’s namesake to the distant town of Devizes.
Continuing through this channel, having passed William the Conqueror’s hunting forest, Savernake, away to the north, the ground rises dramatically to a relatively high point, Martinsell Hill. It provides the most breathtaking view of the Vale on a clear day. Fields quilt the basin, where Intercity trains appear like toys trickling along its tummy. The soft Downs stretch westward in parallel on both sides, pinching the inhabitants into a cosy pod of sleepy comfort. This is ironic, given that the main body of the county, Salisbury Plain, stretches menacingly south and pays continuous tribute to testing the machinations of war. The Ministry of Defence (MoD) dictates a no go zone when the shells are flying. The distant boom of artillery is a strange reminder that all is not peaceful in the Vale.
Like many men prone to idleness and fantastical thinking, Harry Kitson was walking through this very valley to a favoured public house. Harry had immersed himself wholeheartedly in both saving his dream home from structural collapse and developing his village life as a single man.
“So, you’re the bachelor?” the Colonel’s wife had exclaimed when he introduced himself to the couple on a walk shortly after his arrival in the village. “You must meet our daughter.” Harry Kitson’s ongoing love affair with booze, which in England is known as social drinking but in North America is a disease called Alcoholism, meant that he had made far rougher friends than their fragrant offspring at the local pubs since his move to the locality.
Kitson felt even more integrated that autumn after his memorable performance at the local beer festival. The formula for the success of such an event is a simple one. Add one marquee to the local cricket pitch and fill it with casks of beer and cider. Add another tent with hay bales to sit on at one end and build a stage at the other to house the Country and Western or Rock’n’Roll band. In between these two focal points, leave a space for a dancefloor. Then, just add people and see what happens. For things to progress at a measured pace it is also advisable to supply nourishment, for which a hog roast and or a burger bar are the only solutions.
The mention of Harry’s memorable performance might have been a misleading introduction. It was not based on his winning the best brewer competition, participating in the band’s act or an ability to make a particularly delicious apple sauce. Harry’s sometime skill, albeit definitely untrained but always enthusiastic, was for dancing. He had discovered from a youngish age that dance was an artistic liberation that, coupled with his moderately good looks, girls seemed to find most attractive. That knee slide across the polished wooden floor at his friend’s twelfth birthday had cemented his dedication to this ongoing pursuit of both loves. The line of female wallflowers that he had nearly collided with had initially giggled at him but then had joined in his vibrant knee shaking. By his mid teens, Kitson had seamlessly integrated the gigantic beer consumption of northern Europe with Elvis’ limp wrist into his energetic moves. This amateur performance art really developed its own distinction when he discovered his penchant for Acid House music. His freeform expression exploded further when he introduced the representative rocket fuel that assisted these all night revels.
On this particular local debauch, he possessed no such wobble leveller and the effects of his exclusive beer diet, forsaking the necessary balance with pig fat and bread, proved disastrous. Harry’s enthusiasm was undiminished but, with his judgement heavily impaired, he produced a spectacular moment of swoon, stumble and collapse. His neighbours kindly carried him home. He had really made his mark on the village by then.
Some people are slow learners. Others are jolly slow. Harry was just one of those kinds of chap. He just found it easier to ignore the addictions that blighted his decision making process. By doing so, he remained unaware of the damage that he caused to himself and elsewhere. So, without any of his previous drunken crimes in mind, he embarked on another orgy of ignorance by undertaking the walk from his now all conquered village to the local town of Pewsey.
This was previously unchartered territory. It was the ultimate local destination at that particular moment, based on the occurrence of an annual party of the extraordinary. As was his way, Kitson dressed in a mixture of practical and dandy. Firm walking boots, jeans and a navy Guernsey jumper were emboldened by a tan-coloured flasher’s mac, a riotously psychedelic Paisley neckerchief and a floppy, tweed shooting cap. To himself and a handful of similarly style minded souls, he appeared quite the dash. To most, he appeared particularly punchable. However dressed, any good walk, especially in the Vale, should be punctuated by the necessity to stop at suitable hostelries for food and drink. Halfway between Harry’s home and the aforementioned town is The Bruce Arms. That was the initial goal of this perambulation.
The Bruce is a rare breed of British pub nowadays. With the exception of dry roasted peanuts and pork scratchings, it does not serve food. A briefly successful venture on Saturday lunchtimes, when local chefs cooked the most incredible burgers, was short lived. These dripped in cheese and swiney treats, coleslaw, salad, crisps, but curiously, and strangely satisfactorily, with not a French Fry in sight. Unfortunately for The Bruce, yet happily for the cooks, these most talented burger flippers left and opened a restaurant in nearby Marlborough.
On return to its original basics, the pub is all about beer and chat. The landlord is a biker and the local two wheeled community gravitates there resultantly. There is a popular campsite behind the pub. It is positioned between two of the most lovely villages in the area, Easton Royal and Milton Lilbourne. You can already tell they are lovely villages because of their double barrelled names. As a result of this curious combination of bikers, campers and locals, plus the most excellent beer, it is a hive for all things chatterbox. The tractor driver is at his happiest telling his filthiest joke to the barrister. The barrister, not to be outdone, trumps him with a sickly jape to the biker. And so on. If spit and sawdust still existed, it would be in the Bruce. The brewer continues to stipulate in the lease that the nicotine yellow ceilings and Victorian wall lamps remain, despite a relatively recent historic smoking ban and the invention of electricity some considerable time earlier. It was simply inevitable that Harry would find his new home from home at this bastion of English hospitality.
Harry’s village does not have a double barrelled name so could not immediately neighbour the Bruce Arms. However, there are two pub superhighways, each taking approximately forty-five minutes of brisk, beer focused march, which our protagonist had to consider. The one to the south of the valley flirts outrageously with the escarpment below Salisbury Plain. The second legally traverses a combination of roads, tracks, byways and open fields. One has to have a keen nose to attempt this route. Harry was luckily armed with a large one and could sniff his way in blinding sunlight, murky dusk, driving rain, compacted snow or pitch black, if the desire took him. And desire he did. Fortuitously for his amble, he merely basked in the mid afternoon sunshine on that spectacular September day as he strolled west towards his liquid pitstop before the Pewsey Carnival.
Having whooped it up at London’s Notting Hill most regularly and even travelled as far as Trinidad for theirs, Harry had been prepared for this particular type of Bashment for a very long time. Indeed, it was only a month since he had returned from the Blackrock desert in Nevada for the Burningman festival. Harry Kitson loved a party. Dancing plus girls equaled his element. But he had been pleasantly surprised when he researched this local revel. Originating from the late Nineteenth Century, the Carnival has been a community focal point for a very long time. Apart from the obligatory funny shaped vegetables and British Royal Family look-alike competitions, the fancy dress wheelbarrow race and illuminated procession were the most fiercely contested. Harry had previously been given the general gist regarding this prestige event from the vivid description by a drinker in the Bruce Arms only a few days before.
“Imagine this,” he had started in his soothing local drawl, “A juggernaut was towing an open top articulated trailer as an artistic float. Upon this platform was designed and built the most breathtaking Japanese garden, complete with a small arched bridge, numerous Bonsai trees, cherry blossoms and clipped topiary. Two farmers’ wives were dressed as Geisha Girls, complete with clogs, white socks and exotically patterned and brightly coloured Kimonos. Add to that resplendent waist sashes, whitened skin, reddened lips and blackened beehive hairstyles with crossed chop-stick pins and I think you get the picture? The lasses giggled incessantly, clip-clopping, as daintily as possible, across their herbaceous demain whilst furiously fanning themselves with elaborate, delicately corrugated, silk and wooden semi-circles of cooling.
“Real Geisha’s allegedly starve their bodies, manipulate their feet with bindings and are subservient to their antiquated male dominated culture. Those buxom Wiltshire lasses were never going to get away with that charade physically and certainly wouldn’t bow and curtsy when they got their boys back home, if you get what I mean?” He gesticulated in an obvious smutty manner.
“However, life is often viewed with a distorted perspective.” He paused for effect at his descriptive narrative. “The girls’ farming spouses, who were already naturally the size of oxen, had commandeered two massive inflatable Sumo suits, which vastly exaggerated their already gargantuan bulk. They were wrestling each other, to the merriment of all, the giddy shrieks of their wives and the struggled bellows of each other. But, all the bloody time, on repeat, again and again over the loud Tannoy system, they played one song and one song only. The Vapours, “Turning Japanese”. A wonderful piece of music, but repeated for hours and hours would surely drive you bonkers? They won the Best Float Competition, Category A no less, hands down.” As aforementioned, the pub was all about the chat and the beer.
Complete with this background history, Harry set out from home on his walk with gay abandon. He sang or hummed, “I think I’m turning Japanese, I think I’m turning Japanese, I really think so.” He repeated the lyrics again and again. The story and song had certainly put him in the swing. He was already keen to seek beer and the merriment beyond.
The bumbling adventurer followed the vague footpath, initially as a diagonal traverse across a stubble field. Only a few weeks earlier, the track had been a distinct canyon through green maize and distinctive yellow cobs, but now, after the harvest, it was merely indicated by posted arrows from stile to kissing gate to tarmac road. After only a hundred yards or so, his predetermined route, much similar to a crow’s flight, took him off the road onto a semi-surfaced byway, a convenient cut through for lazy amblers and inebriated motorists. The path was flanked by sparse woodland shrubs and nettle clumps, creating a seemingly intermittent and random hedge, below tall, leafy trees that formed a tantalising tunnel.
This track ran along a ridge with rolling, harvested fields sweeping languorously away on either side. To the south was the trickling source of the River Avon, of trout fishing fame before the water company savaged it, and the barge canal lay to the north, near the village of Wootton Rivers. Yes, definitely a double-barrelled type of local spot. The afternoon light shone intermittently down the reddening tunnel, speckling the leaves on either side. Harry sighed. He was mindful of this catalysing another hallucinogenic flashback so stopped and took in the beauty of this most natural of stroboscopes. He carefully placed his hands between the barbs on the wire fence and looked out across the recently tilled earth, over a wood, beyond the double barrelled village’s rooftops to the majesty of Martinsell Hill.
A brief flicker in the light caught his peripheral attention to the west. A figure loomed in the flickering tree tunnel. As the large shape walked slowly towards him, Harry’s curiosity was heightened with every step. By the time the tall man stopped a few yards away, Kitson was truly mystified. His hands seemed glued to the fence. Wiltshire is an odd spot. But this man appeared odder still. The County is without a coast. This was certainly a fish out of water.
Firstly, the gentleman was barefoot. The soles of his feet were toughened and dusty by what seemed like a lifetime of wandering. His pale blue fisherman’s trousers were cut at the calf, revealing muscular lower legs. They were held at the waist by a piece of rope, frayed at the ends. A coconut shell hung from it. He wore a once white string vest. Australians call this clothing article a ‘Wife Beater’. The man before him was of a more single status than marital, Harry surmised. His lean arms were twisted with sinews, leading to powerful hands that were grimy to the nails. One grasped a thick shoulder height staff, slightly spiralled towards the top. It terminated in a large knobule of well handled smoothness. His strong neck was adorned with sandalwood bead and leather thong necklaces. One of these bore a hide pendant in the shape of Africa, triple coloured. Red. Yellow. Green. The colour combination dominated the man’s overall style. This was as a result of an enormous woollen cloak draped off his shoulders that nearly reached the ground behind him. The once bright tricolours were faded by time, sun and rain. Its huge pointed hood was pulled over the tall man’s head. Only a wiry twisted black beard protruded from its front.
Two hands slowly reached up and pulled the head piece back. An array of wild tubular locks bolted in random directions from the head. Some were long and low, others spiralled sideways and shorter ones ascended with horn-like stubbornness to gravity. They were interspersed by small round knots of hair, like burrs buried in a spaniel’s fur. Harry’s previous dermatological observations of arms and legs were confirmed by the smooth ebony intensity of facial skin. A bright sheen of sweat glowed across the sallow cheeks, angled cheekbones and large twin holed boxed button nose. His lips curled downwards at the ends in judgemental scorn. The giant’s coal black eyes bored into the hapless walker. They were framed by vividly bloodshot wild sclera. Despite this ocular assault, Harry was sufficiently well trained to deal with matters politely.
“Good afternoon!” He started enthusiastically and naturally continued this jovial theme. “What an absolutely splendid day for a stroll? Have you come far?” It sounded like a silly question. Harry had seen Afro-Caribbean soldiers at the army camp towns on occasion but this Nyabinghi warrior on field exercise was certainly a first. The large man averted his gaze upwards to the sky, rolled his head slightly, shut his eyes, took a deep breath in and then slowly and noisily exhaled. He levelled his head, opened his red eyes and stared at Harry again in silence.
Harry was an affable fellow. Peace and love were never far from the front of his simple thought process. He decided to go on the charm offensive. The recesses of his mind stirred. The skills that he had honed and primed long ago as a Comparative Religion Bachelor of Arts graduate bubbled forth.
“All Hail to you, Great Priest of the Twelve Tribes! I & I is off for an enlightening stroll now. It is a most beautiful day, blessings be upon you. Thanks and praise to the all conquering Lion of Judah, King of Kings, Lord Most High, Jah Rastafari!” Harry thought to himself that his monologue to the divine was a sure way to press home his advantage. He was disappointed by his rapid defeat, inflicted by just two sounds of patois rebellion which emanated like melodic bass from the Rasta’s throat.
“Tchah!” The first scythed him down. “Babylon!” The second put him in his place.
Unflinching eyes and facial features resumed their pitying analysis of the defeated product of Imperialism. After what can only be described as an uncomfortable silence, the glare dropped and the pressure on Harry’s nervous system was alleviated. The traveller reached an arm into a deep cloak pocket and pulled out a long wrapped and crumpled tube of brown greaseproof paper. Laying it along his inner forearm and cupped pink palm, he carefully unravelled it with his free hand. On completion, Harry saw a magnificent marijuana bud curl halfway to the elbow. It’s pretty little green leaves sparkled intermittently as the tiny crystals of tetrahydrocannabinol caught the light.
“Ya wan’ Lamb’s Bread?” the deep voice rolled with transactional enquiry.
“No, thanks. Jolly kind of you though.” Harry was mindful of the last time he had consumed the herb. “I’m terribly sorry but I was on a holiday in the French Riviera a couple of years ago and had been blessed with a copious quantity of the local pink beverage. On three separate evenings, staring post dinner at the majestic firmament above, adding mindbending skunk to the drink produced an effect commonly referred to as a ‘Whitey’. I’m afraid that the memory of dizziness, nausea and paranoia is still as fresh as your tribesman’s bud.” Like any closet alcoholic, Kitson had blamed the terrifying result on the weed, not his excess of Provencal wine.
“Tchah! Ya’naa’ wanna touch da sky?” The smoker made clear his disgust. Harry concluded that they would never be friends if that type of attitude persisted.
A small piece of the plant was pinched off and placed in the open palm under the paper. The green stalk was then carefully rewrapped and replaced in its wool nest. The coconut was unfastened from the beltline. Harry noticed that it had a clay bowl at the top, rubber tube from the side and a small hole on the other. Liquid could be heard sloshing inside. Matches were passed to Harry. He released his grip on the fence and took them. The man pinched the plant sample and packed it into the ceramic cup. He put his mouth around the hose and finger across the hole. He leant forward to Harry, red eyes stared unblinking inches from his face. The ignitor dutifully struck the red tipped stick, cupped it in both palms with the tried and tested technique of a man that smokes whatever the weather, however drunk.
After the thick fog of repeated tugs on the bong had dissipated, Harry handed back the matchbox and the wanderer repacked his chalice. Still unsmiling, the man stepped back to mutter words of wisdom. Harry was confused and light headed. Maybe he had inhaled a little bit too much of the billowing smoke that had enveloped him? He grabbed the barbed wire fence carefully again to steady himself. He listened as the man began to babble.
“I and I is blessed to be the disciple of Jah Rastafari. Me tribe, one of the Twelve original, ‘ave been wandering de eart’ for thousand o’ year. We escape from slavery back den only to be capture once more by dem monsters of Imperialism again. Babylon!” He scowled directly at Harry and spat at the dusty earth near his boots. Kitson answered with understanding.
“If it is any consolation, my own tribe suffered the same hardship back then too. My Jewish brethren escaped with Moses from the might of the pharaohs after our G*d had brought plague, pestilence, storms and death to the Egyptians. We wandered south and through your Emperor’s lands until the Serphadim reached Spain. They too were persecuted by the brutal Inquisition and fled north where they were massacred by the million in the last century.”
“True dat. Me sympathy wid ya’ people’s plight. But you is wrong ‘bout ya story. It weren’t no Egyptian ya ran from. There is far more powerful forces in da Universe. Five thousand year ago the planet were run by dem Overlords who create the greatest civilisation before mankind ruin it all. Ya don’ really tink that dem pyramid, colossal mathematical masterpiece o’ scientific an’ astrological perfection, were really design by dem pharaoh an’ built by our brethren?”
“I had always assumed from my Biblical studies that the slaves built them.” Harry was getting confused.
“Nah, ya fool!” The Rasta paused briefly after his cut down, then continued, “Our Bible were created hundred o’ year later to fill da void left when dem Overlord disappear. In dere absence, ‘uman need ‘ope, so dey create dem book to make dem believe in da One God, not d’awesome power of the universe beyon’dis sickly planet. People live in fear wid greed ever since. Dey turn dere back on de intense beauty an’ perfection that came before dem and live a lie until now!”
“Oh. I see.” Harry Kitson felt distinctly uncomfortable. He was clearly in the company of a raging lunatic whose consumption of marijuana had twisted his brain into a contortion of paranoia. The giant sensed this inquiry.
“Ya doubt me, Buoy?”
“No. No!” Harry stammered, backtracking fast.
“Why ya think I is ‘ere? Me striding dese ‘ills to pay me respect to dem same Overlord in ya pretty Wiltshire. Ya don’t really think dem ‘enges of stone like Avebury were really made by mankind all dem thousan’ a’ year ago?”
“Well, yes, I do actually!” Harry ventured timidly before gaining a modicum of confidence. “It took years for the pagans to perfectly cut, drag and erect Stonehenge into the most perfect of sun and moon dials.”
“Pity da fool!” The Nyabinghi man shook his head in despair. “Open dem eye! Look aroun’ ya now. Dey is all about ya. Dey have been ‘ere, right ‘ere, just now, inspectin’ a duppy of dere artistic message in dat field the na’. You’ll see! Den you’ll believe too!” With that the man span on his heels, his tricolour cloak swirling with the drama of an opera maestro, and strode off, his feet padding on the dry earth. Harry Kitson watched the strange figure disappear into the shadows of the tree tunnel to the east. A solitary sound hummed peaceably in his ear long after the dread had muttered it. “Righteous.” Harry banked it as a compliment.
A flock of fattened pigeons suddenly got up from their banquet of harvest leftovers in the field’s base just below him. They couldn’t have spotted the pedestrian pedestrian, camouflaged in his environs, motionless without intent. The Lion of Judah had exited in the opposite direction too. So what had startled them in that vast rolling sea of desolate earth? A strange emptiness overcame Harry and his green eyes narrowed as his mind glazed. A distant sound like an electrical hum, vibrant and warming, buzzed behind the trees drawing closer and resultantly louder. The quiet listener felt his hands tingle on the fence and a soft pulsating charge rippled vibrantly up his arms and into his core. He sighed peaceably.
And then, there it was. Slowly meandering across the undulations of the field was a bright, brilliant ball of light. It’s edges were perfect. An orb of precision, the size of his childhood bedroom’s spinnable globe. It floated just ten metres in front of him, about one metre above the field, seemingly tracing its delicate contours. Despite the bright sunshine that basked the valley, this miniature sphere exuded a close up intensity, far outshining the Earth’s life source millions of miles away behind it. It was hypnotic, mesmerising, calming, enchanting and Harry succumbed submissively to its bondage.
The ball moved slowly and fluidly across a subtle curve in the raked expanse of fine chalk soil, sometimes speeding up slightly, then returning to its previous deliberate and seemingly measured pace. Pausing briefly, it suddenly flashed forward and back, side to side, in a series of erratic and frenetic movements. The actions were like those of a fluid yet calculating drunk dancing with a sound speaker at a village beer festival. As quickly as it started, it stopped, then swept effortlessly around the curvature of the nearby terrain again. Once more, it hastened in an orgy of movement and then stopped again.
It was only then that Harry saw that the sphere was tracking some faint marcations on the stubble. The ground was discoloured by enormous circles and patterns. The circles were composed of fresh green shoots whilst the areas between were the more normal grey brown of the harvested stalks. The outer circumference must have been fifty or sixty metres in diameter. The remnants of the colossal artwork floated like a spectre of the soil. Stranger still, a series of perfect cube shapes, joined by their corners, were imprinted on the earth in a diagonal pattern that veered up and across the entire field to the far hedge some hundred and fifty metres beyond. The stubble appeared to be a different length from the rest of the harvested crop and grew in a contrary direction. How could this be, only a few weeks since the combine had reaped its labour? Harry twisted his body to see more through the meagre gap in the trees. In doing so, he nearly tore his thumb on the steel kiss of the fence.
“Aaaagh, Fuck It!” he yelled at the pain of the bash. Everything around him paused. The round beacon just hovered, motionless. Harry felt a strange sense of embarrassment, like he had walked into a loo when a girl is sitting having a pee. He wanted to apologise. He felt like the eyeless globe was scrutinising him, judging him for his untimely and rude intrusion. The dumbstruck fop held his breath and watched, the bruise in his hand a forgotten inconvenience for now. Then a peace descended on him. He sighed. He smiled. Love overcame him. He beamed. Joy overwhelmed him.
The glowing object moved ever so slightly closer to him. It paused briefly, in taut and energetic limbo, suspended between the firmament, the human and the mystical circular pattern below it. Then it shot away, in the opposite direction to his viewpoint, like a pebble freed from a slingshot. It hugged the field closely along the diagonal line of stubble cube patterns, then suddenly flitted up and over the tree hedge at the far side of the field. It was gone. Harry slumped slowly to the caked mud floor on his backside. He ran his fingers through his hair after dumping his cap between his thighs. The digits tingled. His head seemed hot. He felt incredible. At that point, he noticed that his wounded hand hurt no more.
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