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First Steps




  I’d  taken a room for the winter.  No rent to pay,  I was merely picking up the post for someone and keeping an eye on things, but it was mutually beneficial being potentially somewhere for me to go and lick my wounds in the midst of life’s painful turmoil.


Not far from where I was living, yet the route I took went down such old worn and overgrown paths to the long road it was on, my daily trek felt like a trip to a different town and so, to some small extent, took me away from the troubles I was experiencing at that time, or at least gave me a different perspective. 


I remember seeing the house for the first time;  set back from the road, a few stories high with unswept steps up, the leaves of many autumns left to rot on well worn stones, they looked treacherous to climb and so I paused at the bottom, unsure, nervous.  Branches from the unkept high hedge hung over the way too.  I felt like I might be taking the wrong approach - was there another entrance ? Looking round me with sudden panic, I saw the long road, empty, desolate in both directions, no one to ask advice of and so I stood for some time, on the brink of my dilemma. 



            

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