The Coffee Cube

Cleeve Hill, Gloucestershire

Long I gazed at that prodigy of plumage. I cannot tell, can only hint, the things that darted through me then.

Moby-Dick, Chapter 42: The Whiteness of the Whale

There are moments when one must get to high ground. I dart, then, from the dogged homework of my attic eyrie to the high plateau of Cleeve Hill. Here, an unlikely spasm of antennas channel ethereal vibrations down to my feet. Beyond my boots, the pale of Gloucestershire spreads to the horizon. I hang between, abstracted. Liminal.

But not so much that I don’t want something from the Coffee Cube. Carrying a flat white, I loop round the back of the common, through gorse and hawthorn. Red Kites whirl silently overhead. From my perch on the edge of the old quarry, they pass below and above me, following invisible thermal contours, and scanning. Scanning.

Their shadows ripple over the grass. Bincocular lens flare. Perspective shift. What am I to draw from this lunchtime ornithomancy? What lessons? What tone? A kestrel flashes over my head, arcs low then rises and stops dead in the air, beating its wings. Frantic counterbalancing legs thrust back and forth, earning its old name: windfucker.