MORNING SERIAL

THE entrance was flanked by gateposts on each side; twin stone gargoyles with owl-like, malign, expectant eyes that watched me closely. They were still, dumb, stone but they were waiting for me, I knew, to step forward, and walk along the road. They wanted me to step forward. They wordlessly demanded it. There was no way around the gateposts because to each side there were black, thorny trees packed so close together as to be impenetrable, their branches trailing to the ground like coils of barbed wire. I knew that just a handful of steps would have me committed to the muddy road. I knew that if I did set off, I’d feel relieved, the decision made. But the road beyond this open gateway was dark and I could not see where it led and I was transfixed by fear of it, and of the faces on the gateposts too. I somehow knew that if I passed beyond the gargoyles, there was no changing my mind; I would have to carry on along the black road wherever it took me.

In an agony of indecision, I hesitated. I thought I should be more brave, because I knew many others had already taken the road – it was churned up by the feet of hundreds of travellers that had come this way before me – and yet my fear of the ghoulish stone faces, and my knowledge that there was no reversing that journey kept me rooted to the spot. I was ashamed of my fear. And so for a long time the shame and the fear fought inside me demanding a decision, and the gargoyles watched with a terrifying disapproval, and I thought they scorned my cowardice, but still I would not move. Finally I woke, relieved, but also full of guilt because my fear had been stronger than my shame. School Days and Wine Gums BY the time I was old enough to attend, a new school had been built to replace the one destroyed. Ironically, the new Ynysowen Primary was constructed right on top of a slag heap, the oldest in the village said my grandfather, and needed specially designed foundations and walls that would flex with the undependable earth beneath.