the-daniel-1-blog

[the-daniel-1-blog]

"And then I was back to where I began, the lap of the square complete. I finished the sweet apple and tossed the core into the hedge. I took home a dinged car, a bunch of photographs and pages of notes.

I had selected the most empty-looking location as the beginning of a journey across a map of an area I’d often dismissed as boring. Three hundred and ninety-nine grid squares awaited: abundance and possibility.

It was a fine beginning."

[the-daniel-1-blog]

"Life pivots on very little...a confession then: I tend toward hoarding, perhaps through trauma. A vivid memory is of my father standing in the garden in the London house where I spent most of my childhood piling objects onto a fire. Into the flames went old toys, files, papers, and the “Don Bradman” cricket bat I had used as a child and he had used before me. That was after my mother’s first suicide attempt, in preparation for a disastrous move.

After which the family was lost in unmapped territory."