The past is fragile as bones grown brittle with age, as faint as a glimpsed ghost. We live in islands of secret and sacred ways, islands where giants raised their barrows and standing stones. The earth and the rivers embrace thumbed shards of pottery, glass, bones, a sword its jewelled hilt now clasped closely by ropes of roots, a bunch of keys, a velvet cap with a pilgrim’s badge, a clay pipe, a handful of coins each with a  helmeted head on one face.

Scratch your name on the land’s face but below and below is a lost alphabet and lost words. A land with tales to tell and songs to sing, a land of mysteries and riddles. The past is written across the landscape for those with eyes to see and ears that hear.

In writing workshops with Hugh Lupton we unlocked our word hoards then rifled through, juggled with words and phrases to bring you stories. Like magpies we collected sorrows and sighs and rejoicings and rituals. Hugh foraged through our writings and has produced six stories of Bergh Apton from the invasion of the Romans, to Saxon celebration of harvest, to Non, Neb and Luck who keep watch over the door of the church, to those sailing away to the New World, to a blacksmith setting off to his new world and Hannah who wins £1 000 on the Lottery! Connecting them all are woodpecker feathers and a flint tool curved like a young moon.

Listen and watch my people for who knows what dreams and tales will come.