Summer’s Day

Ben Wildsmith

A summer’s day gains value as we age, doesn’t it? As the neon allure of nightlife winks at younger folks, the finer qualities of light become clearer to us.

Scarcity plays a role. If the sun is revealing nature to its fullest glory, warming our skin and glittering across water like casually tossed diamonds, we learn to treasure it.

How many do we have left before the leaves begin to turn? Children gambol into days like these as their God-given right, I measure each breath, savouring, noticing, and willing its memory into my heart.

It’s a grand drive over Maerdy mountain to the Dare Valley Country Park. The steep climb out of the Rhondda brings you to a long plateau before the steep, winding drop down to Aberdare. Is that a kestrel? Probably.

Liars

I’ve consciously turned the news off. The shoddy, vulgar liars we allow to govern us have no place in a day like this. They can sweat it out in their suits, imagining themselves to be successful in windowless confinement.

‘My Right-Honourable friend…’

You’ve got no friends, look at you scheming over a despatch box when you should be out looking for a kingfisher. Freaks, the lot of you.

I turn the music up louder as the twin jewels of Aberdare and Mountain Ash loom below us.

‘I’m not from Aberdare, I’m from Mountain Trash,’ an elderly gentleman I look after at work is fond of saying. It looks like the promised land from up here.

We’re listening to Sierra Ferrell’s twisted take on old-timey bluegrass.

‘I come down here from the mountain top, I can drive you crazy yes I can,

I’ll chop you down like a smalltown cop, I can drive you crazy yes I can.’

The fiddle saws away as Sierra’s firecracker soprano leaps and swoops above it. There it is again. It is a kestrel.

Pandora’s box

Unheard, the radio is Pandora’s box. Open that and a wintry gust of societal collapse will close down the sun as unaffordable.

In Gaza, they are bombing the rubble now, paranoid that something might still be alive.

‘My Right-Honourable friend…’

It’s a fixed circuit we have: walk up to the lake, circumnavigate it and back to the café for breakfast.

Routine is a luxury I’ve been slow to appreciate. Seeming the opposite of excitement, I’ve avoided it as the gateway to decrepitude.

Now though, I’ve seen a world where elderly gentlemen from Mountain Trash are shunted around from hostel to hostel, losing possessions with each move.

With the stroke of a pen, facilities are closed, or bombs dropped. To have an idea where you will be tomorrow is good fortune nowadays.

In the lake, two large, shaggy dogs are stood up to their waists in the water. They are motionless, staring at their owner on the banks. He throws them a tennis ball, but it doesn’t seem to register. They just stare quizzically at him. How did we get here?

Excitement 

On the way back to the café we pass four severely-disabled children in large, hi-tech wheelchairs.

Their chins are supported by straps as they roll through the shaded lane, accompanied by their support workers. Ahead of them the direct sunlight awaits, and excitement is mounting.

Eight smiles are contributed to the brightness.

Further along, another support worker is walking backwards, coaxing and encouraging.

A little girl is learning to use her white stick, gingerly feeling the ground in front of her and listening for direction. Her smile is of rapt wonder as independence opens up before her.

Safe in the embrace of people who care, she has her summer’s day.