Raymond Friel

in memoriam D.H.C. Hughes 1924-1979

Your mother rattled in whisky sodas. Above the fire a print of the Beagle on Pacific swell, 1835;

a mantel of peaked caps and wedding veils, your father on a beach in jacket and tie (in the hand on your shoulder an unlit smoke ...)

We lounged in the white bungalow he built, weighing our words in the tumblers as fire performed its one trick over...

Out on the back nine, beyond the banter, we’d be stopped on the elevated tees by a sunset of epic proportions, or, down in the firth, the fin of a sub – its black body packed with catastrophe – heading for its ‘home’ in the Holy Loch.

He was working shifts in Hunterston and after the long silence of the coast road came home to the early morning bedlam of...

I must begin with these stones as the world began. Hugh MacDiarmid

From the car park, the duckboard angles up like a runway to the overcast distance – but soon you’re back on solid earth, or rather shingle which yields and crunches underfoot. Behind you, the canter of the downs has come to an abrupt and nervous halt – as if it knows its own limitations. The rolling landscape...