So I told them, it’s all very nice, putting the stones in a circle, but if you want the avenue to line up with the midsummer sun at the time of its rising, it’ll cost you. My lads will be in situ come dawn on the day of the solstice to set the markers but we’ll need to be team-handed when we install the stones. Some of my lads are working way over in Chicklaid and Aldershot, and their foremen will be pissed if I prioritise this work over theirs. And they told me not to fret, that they’d sort it.
So I asked them what stone did they reckon they’d use, bearing in mind it’d need quarrying and ferrying to site, so maybe scale it down a bit to make it manageable, and they muttered that they’d an eye on some limestone on a hillside in Combrogos. Combrogos? I said, seriously lads, where’s the stone? They said, straight to my face, ‘No kidding, mate, the stone’s in Wales.’
So I said, how do you expect to bring it all this way? And they said they’d this technique where they roll it on logs. Logs! They’re not pebbles we’re on about, these. They’re as tall as a couple of horses, hoof to haunch, and weigh in the neighbourhood of forty donkeys. I said, ‘And how many rivers will you need to cross? How many hills will you climb?’ They laughed and said they’d handle it. I laughed too, and told them I thought they were daft. But they shrugged, and said, ‘Yep, but won’t it be great when it’s built.’ They could do some proper worshipping then.
Those druids, man, a right bunch of characters.
Craig Smith is a novelist and poet, who was awarded an MA in Creative Writing from Birkbeck University. He was a winner of Poetry Archive Now WordWise, a rising star in the LISP Anthology, long-listed for the Brotherton Poetry Prize, and selected for the PI Prize List of Finalists.
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