Old Dear in Sowerby
Kaddy
It’s an old town, no mistake, and been here for ages and ages. It was old even when the Normans came nearly nine hundred and fifty years ago. An old town and a small one, only a few thousand souls. It’s an old town and if it hasn’t grown much, it hasn’t died either and there’s some comfort in that. It’s an old town protected by an old magick; changes have come slow, at a walking pace, because the people here like it that way.
Two or three times a week, the old dear puts on her hat and gloves and walks into the town to purchase the few things she needs to see her through the week. Most old folks here tend to walk. They’re not against cars, you understand, nor bicycles but those conveyances aren’t necessary for most errands and nobody’s in such big a hurry. You see more when you walk, and if you happen to see a friend it’s easy to stop anywhere for a bit of a chat. Try that in your car.
Old women have walked this same route for centuries, and walked it for the same reasons. They walked it back before there were sidewalks and streetlamps, back before the road was paved, before there were cars and bicycles, back when it was nothing more than a narrow path for driving livestock to market. They walked down the hill into the old town to buy, barter or trade what they needed, then back up the hill to their small homes. Time is just a succession of old dears wending their way down the hill and back up, two or three days a week. Each one of those footsteps of each one of those old women was an echo of the woman before her. Together they’ve created a rhythm, a heartbeat, that has sustained the old town and regulated the pace of its life.
It’s an old magick and the women who practice it aren’t even aware of its existence.
Blog photograph copyrighted to the photographer and used with permission by utata.org. All photographs used on utata.org are stored on flickr.com and are obtained via the flickr API. Text is copyrighted to the author, greg fallis and is used with permission by utata.org. Please see Show and Share Your Work
