Strange omens, strange times. What happened to the moon, swapped for some fat baby in a veil? After dark, and rising from rolling ground between high trees and rooftops here, the full moon came closer than it had been to Earth for many years. But it seemed odd, unfamiliar: a huge face, white and expressionless, surrounded by a halo of gold light darkening to amber, hiding behind a gauzy veil of cloud – an impostor moon, a foundling.
In the morning I had sidled down the road which crossed the Edge and through a gap in a low brick wall. The building was hidden in a forest of ash staves and green handles, only slightly visible because the saplings had no leaves yet. The door was ajar and bright morning light poured in around ivy pushing through iron-framed windows. Painted on the far wall in gold letters on a blue banner was "Lo I Am With You Always", but I have been to few places which felt so abandoned. The derelict Methodist chapel for quarry workers was filled with files of purchase orders for drill tubes and flanges and boxes of stone core samples; it had a planning notice for conversion into a holiday let. The quarry across the road was fast becoming history too.
What felt truly present was the pulse of spring breaking in from a long winter. Outside, the first small tortoiseshell butterfly and bumblebees found flowers which looked like children's drawings of the sun, and spotted woodpeckers drummed messages on hollow trunks. But it was in the foundling moon later that night I saw omens made from things I'd witnessed in the day: a Loddon lily under dark trees, a swan on the river, a trout eye under water. Strangest of all: a bat flying through a rookery in broad daylight. The moon seemed to say, "Lo I Am Always With You". But I didn't believe it either.