A country lane cut through low flowing slopes, a soft dale where the broken tarmac runs like a river, fields on either side. Tree-lined and hedges. Blackberries abundant, though at the end of their growth. I came up here to find my balance.

The day had been muted, tired, sedated. And not bad for that. A little dream-like in fact. The mind not quite settled into the body. The body aching from the effort of holding in the mind. It took time to muddle my way through the door.

Sauntering along the seafront, this flicker of willpower was starting to give out. I was stopped by the pier. Ghosts, pleasant winds, the end of summer settling into my bones. Sat down in a haze, listening to the world go by. I wanted to lie in a concrete corner and sleep. Hours passed in the minutes spent, or so it seemed. Distant memories came to sit with me. Someone vaped a heady herb.

And there was a breeze, all day long. Along the promenade, between the trees, settling on the weary walker’s evening clothes and breathing there. It tasted like the first day of autumn, a good day for a countryside pilgrimage. And slowly I realised. Felt the flavour. Adjusted my mind through my almost-malaise. Began the walk. I was not a pilgrim looking for a specific place, just one who wants the journey. Time to feel the change.

The first blackberries I found, I reached as far back as I could into the brambles, past the thorns – finding those that looked untouched, hidden treasures. Placed my fingers over the berry, tugged. It split in two. Sweet mush.

The second came free easily – a sign that it’s ripe and ready – but the skin had started to wrinkle, one or two of its little globes had collapsed and spilt their juice the night before. I found one to taste and it only had half the flavour that had been there three or four weeks before.

All along my pilgrimage the blackberries seemed to be at the latter limit of their season. But some new ones were growing. Tough and small. I told myself I’d find out if it helps the bramble to pluck as many as possible – it does with other fruiting plants and flowers.

I walked and pondered. Pondered and walked. Past the quiet suburban houses, the delicately towering mansion – with a burrow of a dirt road between its weathered halves. Past the tiny terraced cottages that eclipse a new horror built across their gardens. The self-serve jam and book seller. The holiday caravan park. Along the weather-torn and thick-hedged lane – deeper into a place not quite colonised.

At the crossroads there’s a boundary. Not obvious until it is. The lane feeds off to private residences and the valley and wooded walks on one side, up an incline to go down on the other. Going forward, the furthest reaches of town have ended. You’re out in the beyond. Rare houses with colossal gardens, farm fields, fish ponds. A darkly-coated cat crossing the path and watching the foxes.

It’s here, at the right time of year, around dusk, the midges and the little creatures whizz about the hedge tops. And the tiny flyers swoop to catch them. Darting across your front, diving past your head. It can feel like you’re under attack until they impress on you their agility, their precision. Somehow, it starts to feel safe, and you can relax, watch the show.

But those critters were not out on this walk. Only the fruitflies scouting the blackberries, the fluttering wood pigeons and cawing distant seagulls.

It was a couple of hours, maybe three in total, to walk the walk and back – yet felt like decades flowing through the mind. Heavy, but pleasing in their weight as they moved.

I like to call the seasons as appropriately as I can. That is, I don’t like to claim them early. But this day in August was truly an autumn day, and a beautiful one at that. The leaves had not gone brown, the earth was not soaked, the sun not obscured by cloud. It was warm enough too. But the world had shifted. Autumn had entered it.

And above this rippling sea of mystical alteration, the moon, a pebble suspended too many miles away, perfectly placed. A shining eye, an egg, or a ghostly ship lurking among the swirling fog of cloud. I didn’t see it walking out – it was hanging at my back, priming its guns.

The walk ended where the lane cuts off, remainder swinging up to a car park and a busy road. You can continue along a dirt track – in Winter a long and muddy trench – to Fairlight. That segment, from up here down to the sea, is perhaps the finest in the territory. But it’s not for today.

I took another pull on the blackberries and found them uniform with their berry blood down the way. Of course – seasonal berries follow the seasons together. I knew I wouldn’t walk on to Fairlight, but I leant on the gate daydreaming for a while. Watching the field, letting time wander. Attending the threshold.

It was on the way back when the moon shot through the evening cloud, orange against murky blue-grey, startled me from my reverie. Ah, the moon! You again! Yes! And a phrase ran through my mind that bled back into a shifting classroom in an aged house where I first learned – first noticed – how to weave images with words.

…

Back when I was a kid, primary school, I wasn’t doing so well. For a moment (maybe some years) people thought I was an idiot, a no-hoper. Consigned to the lowest orders. Or at least the remedial maths class. I managed to convince my parents this came from my alienation – being bullied for years by teachers and students alike – and generally having no idea what I was supposed to be doing.

I liked hiding in small spaces under chairs and in cupboards.

I didn’t enjoy doing dull tasks for teachers I didn’t connect with, alongside students I’d rather pin to the table with a pair of scissors. I wasn’t violent, by the way, but something happens with humans when you strip them of all their sociable avenues for safety and satisfaction, instead make them either angry or miserable, usually both. Basically, the human in question starts to look for some kind of desperate resolution to their plight. For example, stabbing Taylor’s hand with a pair of safety scissors. It’s alright, I missed. Had to giggle at the idea that they were safety scissors after that.

Once I’d convinced my parents I wasn’t hopelessly deranged, my Dad – who’d recently lost everything and had some spare time on his hands – gave me a bootcamp over summer. I’m pretty sure I’d fucked up the 11+, or SATS or whatever it was called. So what he was doing was 1). trying to make me good enough to pass the entrance exam to a private, fee-paying school. And 2). trying to teach me enough sporting and social knowledge so I wouldn’t immediately be annihilated in that next school. Confidence building.

Almost makes me glad that his business was wiped out, because if it wasn’t I really don’t think he would’ve had the time for me. Funny how things go, isn’t it?

The “bootcamp” (we both liked our army stuff) paid off. I got into a decent school. And what made this school “decent” was not its reputation, not the networking opportunities (you know, the usual things people associate with private school), but the fact that the teachers actually cared about me. Actually wanted me to learn as a student and succeed as a person.

That, by the way, is the main thing that differentiates private from state, at least in my experience. And it’s that which you’re paying for, especially in those younger years. Confidence. A lot of folk seem to be paying for overconfidence and arrogance as well, but I’ve had an almost terminally low self-esteem for much of my life. So whatever excess on offer for others was more of a survival ration for me. A ration I was possibly allergic to.

It was in this new, private school that I first heard the phrase “the moon was a ghostly galleon”.

I think I actually enjoyed, even loved, every class at that school. Not sure about geography – though the geography teacher was a very wonderful human. However, it’s English I mostly associate with my internal and external world dramatically improving. There were personal landmarks within those English classes that still resonate with me today. Maths too actually. But given how my life panned out, English gets all the glory.

And it was in one of these English classes that we were being taught about metaphors. I wasn’t sure what a metaphor was, or why I needed to know. Then they brought out an example: “The moon was a ghostly galleon.” Immediately I thought, “Yes! The moon IS a ghostly galleon!”

You know, when the cloud cover goes a bit misty/foggy over its face, and it’s floating there, watching you, like some sort of Flying Dutchman in the sky. Sure I have reservations about whether it’s got cannon and a hold full of trade goods – but in many ways it does have those things. It carries so much meaning, and it can easily become fierce or threatening.

It still took me a while to get my head around the word “metaphor” – I never really liked having all these tools of linguistics neatly labelled – but that moon phrase completely changed my world. Knowing that you could use language like that. I mean it’s not just fun, it’s a better way of describing what’s going on. More accurate, more revealing. Before that lesson, I hadn’t really noticed that such a thing was possible I think.

I was out having a walk through the country earlier, and on my way back the sunset moon was hiding behind some clouds. The galleon itself. And the phrase returned, as it often does. So I stopped in a pub and wrote this. And this was shit, so in the days following, I wrote the text this post actually starts with.

I’ve maybe edited it out, but I felt like I was writing in a posh accent for a lot of this. Blame the Ginger Man if so.