100 words? To write about a place and what it means to you? Naturally, my mind went to a pass in the Black Cuillin on the Isle of Skye overlooking Loch Sligachan. The place I'd like my ashes scattered. Or the Torres del Paine national park in Patagonia where my wife and I spent part of our honeymoon.
But then I thought of the place I'd returned to most often in my life. A safe place. A place I'd been to in the high Arctic, 500 miles from the north pole, fretting about polar bears in spite of the high-powered rifle next to me in my tent; during an ice storm on Skye; a fitful night's sleep in the humidity of coastal Thailand; listening to dingoes yelping in the night at Uluru; in a hotel on the Left Bank.
My father and uncles' old bedroom at my grandparents' house. On the end of a small terrace in a working class area of Bristol in the south west of England. Where the down filled pillow almost enveloped your entire head. In the furrow in the mattress left by my father. In the sodium yellow glow from the street lamp outside, the parallelograms of the windows sweeping across the wall and up over the ceiling as the occasional car turned into the street. Safe. Warm. Loved. And I can go back anytime I like. Wherever I am. And I often do.
Simon Heath Consulting artist. Illustrator - listener - facilitator - connector - writer.
Murmuration - Musings on the world of work
@ SimonHeath1 on Twitter
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